2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

Creepy kids + found footage = a creepy, nihilistic film that is filled with dread from beginning to end. What exactly is up with these kids? And how far are they gonna take it?

Our last film before October begins is cobbled together from home movies shot during the holidays, starting out, appropriately enough, with Halloween. Home Movie is difficult to find nowadays, but fans of the found footage genre should give it a watch.

Home Movie (2008)

Episode 270, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today, we venture back into found footage, horror, which we dip into quite a bit, cause there’s quite a bit out there, especially back in the early two thousands. And the film that we’re doing today is from 2008 and it was a request by Alec. Probably a very, I think it’s a very long standing request.

I don’t put dates on the requests that we get, but, um, we put them on our list in order of reception. And this one was pretty high, pretty early on the list. Yeah. So Alec, if you were still listening to us after all these years, congratulations, we finally got around to 2008’s Home Movie. And thank you for directing us to it because I wouldn’t have really found this movie otherwise.

Well, I’m sorry I say that. And I think I’ve seen it on a list or two for creepy kids films. And so that was what I think more recently made me go back and kind of look at our list and go, Hmm, creepy kid movie. We haven’t done that in a while. Oh, here is home movie and the little write-up in the list that I saw made it sound like it was pretty darn cool.

And then, uh, you independently of me also said, Hey, I’m really kind of interested in doing this movie as well. And so we thought we would do that this week. Yep. IFC picked it up. It did a, for a film festival circuit IFC picked it up as a sort of. Pay like a streaming type service on there, IFC films thing.

And then of course I went to DVD and I do not believe it’s easily available. Even out there on streaming services. You weren’t really able to find it many places where you Craig, 

Craig: where you and I go to. I don’t know. There’s, there’s some website that I go to that you can just type in the title and it will tell you everywhere that it’s streaming for free, everywhere that you can pay for it.

And, uh, I couldn’t find this streaming anywhere. 

Todd: Crazy. Right. You just imagined pretty much everything’s available, but kids it’s not the case. Um, how about you had you even heard of this before, Craig? What, what kind of clued you into to doing this one this week? 

Craig: Well, just because it had been so high on the list for so long, but also because I had seen it and I must have seen it.

Gosh, I don’t know. I have no idea when a long time ago, probably on DVD. Um, maybe, but it had been so long. That I remembered the basic premise and I remembered it being disturbing and that’s kind of all I remembered. So I genuinely was interested in watching it again. I’ll be really interested, interested to hear what you thought of it because Hmm.

Hmm, it’s a head-scratcher.

Todd: I did also come away with it with mixed feelings and not because it was found footage, you know, I think I’m far beyond my original, uh, I would say just short of disdain for found footage, movies, since being disappointed by the Blair witch project. So many years ago, since we’ve done so many found footage movies on this podcast.

Pretty much at Craig’s request. I have warmed up to the genre cause we’ve seen some good ones. 

Craig: We have, we’ve seen some stinkers too. We have seen some good ones. It’s true. 

Todd: I mean, sometimes found footage is just a way to shoot a movie cheaply, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the idea lends itself well to that.

And we’ve seen a couple movies like that. This is Christopher denim. Christopher denim is a, is an actor and also writer and, and a bit of a producer, but he’s been in a lot of big movies, our go shutter island over a lot of television, and this is his writing and directing day. And he, since directed at least one other horror movie or thriller, whatever you might call it called preservation.

And it looks like he’s filming one right now called old flame for a first film. It’s an interesting choice. It also starts some fairly, I mean, when you say fake. You know, it’s like people that you see and you kind of recognize, and then you get to their IMDV profile and you’re like, oh yeah, God, they’ve been in a thousand things.

And I guess I have seen them in one way or another. Uh, Adrian passed, Dar is a guy named David Paul. Uh, who’s the father, uh, in this family. And, uh, he has a lot of credits from a lot of big things. Uh, agents of shield, Supergirl, a lot of Avengers stuff. He’s done a lot of voice acting for cartoons. So I mean, that’s, that’s pretty impressive.

And then, uh, I think the, the person playing the mother, her name is Katie McClain. Again, not a household name by any means, but also has been on. And I’ve been waiting for you to point this out is currently 

Craig: on 

Todd: what is she currently on that you could possibly know more than me about days of our lives. 

Craig: I’m telling you so many.

I mean, it makes sense that, um, these, these actors that pop up in horror movies work their way through soap operas because in a lot of way, horror and soap operas are. It’s very similar there, they cast beautiful people and put them in melodramatic situations. Um, so I’m not surprised she’s done lots of soap work.

I 

Todd: was surprised like every one of them. Yeah. She’s 

Craig: been in times and she’s been on days of our lives for the past couple of years. I was surprised I don’t watch the show anymore. I haven’t watched it for years. I, and. Even just, my mom’s still watch this. She tells me about it sometimes, but, um, even just flipping through, like, if it’s on, like I’ll flip to it for a second, I don’t even recognize anybody on it anymore because even though, um, the, the cast of characters remains pretty consistent.

Like they introduce new characters fairly regularly, but there are lots of characters that have been on the show for decades. She, um, is playing a role. That back in the day. I really liked that character, but it was played by, um, a different actress. So anyway, she, she was kind of the, the good girl of Salem.

I have no idea who she is anymore, but she was the sweet, good girl and Adrian pastor. I remember him most from heroes, the TV. Which was like, which was its first season. It kind of blew everybody away. And then it was one of those sad things where just from the second season on just continuously went downhill.

Um, he was also, uh, married to Natalie. Mains I think is her name, um, lead singer of the Dixie chicks. He was married to her for a while, but I think he was naughty and got caught and they, uh, they’re not, they’re not married anymore, but he’s super charming in this oh God movie, almost to the point where. It starts to become well, it starts to become a little bit unbelievable until the last part of the movie where things start to fall apart.

Todd: Let me point out, by the way, he was a chipper and top gun. He was in near dark movies that we’ve seen. I’m not sure what his character was in near dark. I mean, his name was Caleb Colton, but I don’t remember enough about them to be able to point him out. Carlito’s way. He’s a, he’s a very seasoned actors.

No question that he’s good and believable. And I do think that all of the acting in this film was quite believable and quite good. No problem there, but I get what you’re saying about how he’s just so charming and so nice that after a while it’s like, oh, come on. Really. However, in the defense, what I really enjoyed about this found footage movie, and it’s called home movie because it’s an assemblage of the home.

Of this family of four people, and there’s only one other character besides the dog. So it’s a very, very small cast. The kids barely talk. The dad and the mom do all the talking pretty much through the whole movie. There’s a dog and there’s one other minor character who comes in towards the end. W what I liked about it was that we take it for granted now that we have phones in our pockets and we videotape all the time, everywhere we go, this movie seems to come from an era when it was a novelty to have.

A video camera in your house it’s it was a separate device that you purchased, you know? And what did you do? You just, you didn’t run around videotape. Most of us didn’t run around, videotaping everything. It was something you broke out for holidays, special events, something the kids do at school or whatever.

And that’s. And so what really endeared me to this movie from the beginning is the first scene, except, well, I mean, there’s like a quick shot of like some rotting dog decomposing corpse or something, but the next scene is the dad flipping through the settings on the camcorder, trying to select the correct title to display the correct holiday.

This is what we get with the movie is that it’s not like they’re just videotaping everything. In their life, they’re pulling out the camcorder for the holidays. And so most of the movie with a few exceptions is the footage that we see is taking place on a particular holiday Christmas Valentine’s day.

And that was very real to me. Like I enjoyed that bit. And what you just said about the dad being really chipper and quite charming. Another thing that endeared this movie to me was that this was played exactly like. We were. All right, so you break out the video camera during the holidays, and of course it’s the holidays everybody’s kind of on their best behavior.

And then everybody’s kind of mugging for the camera and kind of performing for the camera because we don’t have cameras shoved in our faces all the time. And so the camera is treated as a novelty in the scenes of this film and people seem to be the dad and the mom. Anyway, they’re so aware of the. That they’re acting for and performing for it and kind of staging the scenes based around the camera.

And so I give them a pass for that. I feel like, yeah, this is like how I was when we would flip a camera on in the eighties and break it out. We we’d be a little nice and goofy and silly and fun, and we’d only show the good part. Right of our lives. And so it’s interesting how the movie’s framing device allows for this.

It’s like, you’re only seeing the dad and the mom and the, I say the dad and the mom, cause it’s really the way it is. Cause the kids are weird from the beginning, but it’s, it’s really the dad and the mom who are just. Break the camera for the holidays here. We’re recording this for posterity and see how much fun we’re having.

And Hey kids let’s do this and let’s do that. And Hey, you know, do something silly for the camera, kind of shtick over and over and over and over again, you know, until things start to. Weird. Yeah. And so I liked that actually. I thought it was kind of, kind of real, right. 

Craig: Yeah. And I agree with you, you know, the whole aspect of the holiday, of course, especially, you know, parents, you want to try to make it fun and, and like you said, focus on the positive.

The other thing is I really get the impression that especially the dad, both of them, but especially the dad are really, really trying. Like, they’re just trying really hard to be a nice, happy family. That’s one of the things that I like about this movie, first of all, I think that it’s really well-written.

And when I say that, I’m not just talking about the dialogue, the dialogue does feel very natural at most parts. There are some parts where it feels a little bit forced and it seems a little bit strange that they’re using the camera in such intimate moments. 

Todd: There are times. Yes, 

Craig: but the dialogue is fine and believable.

But when I say written, I just mean that there are so many little things going on in this movie. And. I assume you noticed them too, because I don’t think that this is just a second viewing kind of thing, because I saw it so long ago and remembered so little, but there’s this consistent imagery that pops up throughout and it connects and ties into the story.

And there’s a lot of dragon imagery. 

Todd: I was just going to ask, you’re talking about the dragon, right? Yeah. The 

Craig: kids were these like, oh gosh, I don’t even know. It’s Japanese. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s 

Craig: Japanese dragon masks that they wear. Uh, sometimes they also have this stuffed dragon. That’s kind of like serpentine it’s long.

It’s cute. It’s a toy, but it’s just always kind of there. It’s weird. Like why is it always around? Like sometimes like the kid might be there, like there’ll be sitting in bed, reading a story and it makes sense that there’s. A stuffed animal there with them in bed. That’s fine. But then, you know, sometimes the dad will just, you know, hear a noise in the closet or something and they’ll open it up and that dragon will just be hanging over the, the hanging rack or they’re playing hide and seek.

And they look for the kids in the basement and the kids aren’t in the spot, but the dragon is, and, and the dad also early in the movie, They have story time where the dad tells this story and he does a lot of mugging, but it’s for his kid. So it makes sense. And he does a lot of voices. And so he reads this story in a funny voice and the stories about this dragon who puts on a paper mask to trick all these little kids into.

That he’s one of them. Um, and he has to go through all these things to prove like he can sing like them and dance like them. And, you know, he does all of these things. And so finally they accept him and then they’re like, okay, it’s time for lunch. And we, that the dragon took off his paper bag mask revealing the two hideous heat.

The children started to scream, but their screams were soon. Inside the dragon stomach

that was perhaps the most vastly inappropriate fairy tale I’ve ever heard. It’s an allegory for, you know, don’t trust. It all ties into what’s going on in their family. And what’s going on in their family is that their kids are fricking weird. And from the beginning, there is no evolution of this from the time that we meet them, they are selling, they are weird.

They’re not talking. They rarely make eye contact. They don’t talk, they never smile. And they just do really weird stuff. And that’s the. Bothered me most about the movie is. 10 minutes into the movie. I’m like, you guys come on, I get that. They’re your kids. And you want to maybe look past the fact that they’re weird and you hope that by trying to engage them and encourage them to do fun things and stuff, and like teach them things and, and really go out of your way to try to bond with them.

Especially the dad. They’re just weird. And there’s clearly something wrong with them. You have to wait. Come 

Todd: on mom. You’re yeah, you’re a child psychologist or psych you of all people you should know. But I do feel like maybe the movie in a very more, maybe more subtle way than it should have, uh, gives a reason for.

Because the family has just moved to the middle of the woods or whatever. And what’s also kind of nice about this. As information is parceled out over time in what I thought were fairly natural ways, usually dialogue between the mom and the dad. That’s a little more candid when they’re talking about their problems and their past in the beginning, you know, of course you don’t know what their problems are, if they’re even our problems.

And then sometimes it felt a little forced, like maybe some of this should have been parceled out a little earlier on, but. Generally speaking, it seems like they moved, he moved the family out to the woods and it was more or less his idea. And it was because they were experiencing some problems and that was supposed to help solve them.

But we don’t really know what those issues were. But it has to be something with the kids because they’re kind of talking about the kids in that regard. Yeah. Well, a 

Craig: little, little things are suggested. I do like that. Like it doesn’t just slap you in the face. Like there’s not big moments of exposition and revelation.

It’s just subtle things like, yes, you think that they moved in the hope that things would get better. And so it seems like they’ve already had some struggles with the kids, but I think that it’s also suggested that the dad has struggled. Alcoholism. And that’s something that he’s been attempting to work on and he is working on it.

Um, but as the movie goes on, he starts drinking a little more like nothing that I would be concerned about necessarily like he drinks a lot on new year’s Eve. Well, Who doesn’t right. But if he had struggled with addiction and alcoholism in the past, I can understand why that might be a little bit worrisome for his wife.

There’s also, it’s just very cat. Well, not casually, I guess, but we find out in a very natural way that the dad was abused. Child by his own father. And so the mother says it is incredibly common, uh, for abuse to happen, generationally people who have been abused have a, more of a tendency to abuse. And so there’s, there’s just these and they’re real family issues, but the kids are so weird.

Todd: You’re right. The kids are weird from the get-go and uh, I mean, there are some things, right. There’s a, it starts at a Halloween time. And so mom and dad like, Hey, happy Halloween. And they seem like the coolest parents ever, almost like they’re trying too hard, but you know, they’ve got like a, one of them has a birthday apparently on Halloween.

Craig: Oh, that’s right. Both of them. And I think that that’s relevant that they were born on Halloween. Like there’s suspicious little things. Anyway, go ahead. 

Todd: No, you’re right. No, I, I don’t mean to gloss over that. You’re right. So they’re both born on Halloween. There’s this Halloween party and the parents are like, Hey, happy birthday slash Halloween.

And she’s dressed up as the bride of Frankenstein. And he comes in and the kids are sitting at the table just like staring into space, like completely. Not interacting completely doing nothing. They seem very nonplussed about this whole situation. They almost have pissed off as though something happened before the camera started rolling, you know, but then you realize this is just how those kids are all the time.

And it did kind of make me think like there. It may be aware that there are spaces between with what we’re seeing, right? Yeah. I mean, this camera, what we’re seeing is like, basically between the holidays in between certain events that happened in their family, but I’m thinking like, so like the kids must talk like at some point or else the parents wouldn’t keep going on.

Like this month after month, pretending that everything’s okay. Or are the parents just in this extreme, weird denial situation as well? They feel. It’s still the fall. It must have been around the Halloween time. They filmed dad playing catch with a, with the kid and the kid’s name is yeah. Jack that’s right.

And he’s dads, you know, Hey, toss me the ball. And Jack kind of throws the ball at him. And then, uh, Jack doesn’t catch the ball. And then he has he tosses a ball up in the air and whacks it with his baseball bat and it flies into the. And so the mom has to go in and get the ball from the woods, which is kind of another thing.

They, she runs into this clubhouse where Emily standing there creepily behind this little fence that the kids have erected with a sign that says, you know, Jack and Emily’s clubhouse. Nobody else is allowed. No, no parents allowed in. And I thought, yeah, that would last two seconds in my family, that somebody is going to go in there and at least check it out at some point.

So that was a little weird and it’s creepy. Right. But then, um, we see a little bit more of this toss back and forth and Jack picks up a rock and Chuck. At the dad. And he’s like, did you just throw a rock at me and goes after him? And of course the camera shuts off. And then, uh, the next day, I guess, or later that day or whatever, you know, dad’s got the camera back on and he’s saying, well, two days 

Craig: we’re going to learn about ancient arch of a raking raking.

It was a first discovered by a Chinese, a mountain task force in 1802. My lovely assistant Jack Poe is raking today because he’s being punished for throwing a rock at his dad’s hip, but you got Jay it dead bug. This is where he employed the notorious garbage bag technique. And there you have a kids.

That’s our lesson for today. Dead things go and trappings, which 10 becomes highly significant later on. 

Todd: Oh, my God. Yeah. And I’m thinking, yeah, but in between here, surely Jack said something, you know, like surely when dad sat him down to talk to him about this, this rock throwing that there was an actual.

Interaction of some kind and he just didn’t stare at him into space. And, and that, that, from that point, even continuing on, I thought, is it just when the camera is on that the kids are clamming up? Otherwise it seems like the parents would have been, they would have come to a conclusion a lot sooner that something’s really messed up with their.

Don’t you think 

Craig: you, I don’t know, one would think, but I, you don’t get the impression that they’re only weird on camera. I get the impression that they’re weird all the time and they do rarely speak at 

Todd: all. Oh, I don’t think Emily says a single word. Toward the very end of the movie. Well, there’s one point, that’s the only 

Craig: one whose there’s one, there’s one point where they’re in the car and they’re talking to each other, but in jibberish and the mom doesn’t like it.

And she’s like, I don’t like when they do this, it’s like they have their own language, which I understand is a twin thing. Not all twins, but it happens so whatever, but I could also understand if your kids never talked to them, the only time they did speak around you, they were doing it in code. That that would be unsettling.

I, there, I mean, there’s so there again, it’s just a special occasions there. The parents 10th wedding anniversary, and there’s a whole goofy conversation between the dad and the wife while she’s in the shower. Again, this is another one of those moments where I don’t think that it’s necessarily unlikely, but it seemed, I don’t know, the dad’s kind of obsessed with the video camera and that’s not unrealistic either, because like you said, people today just take for granted that we can whip out our video cameras at any time.

But these were having access to that. When we were kids, my dad was super excited about it. And one of the videotape. At first I at first. Yeah. And I remember, um, you know, of course even when we were like teenagers, dads had those nice little handheld camcorders, those little tiny cassette tapes in them.

That’s great. But I remember when I was a little kid, my dad followed my family around Disney. With a huge ass VCR slung around his shoulder and a camera, the size of like a studio news camera. 

Todd: That’s right. The VHS tape was in the VCR, strapped to his shoulder with a big cable leading to the camera itself.

I remember those. 

Craig: Um, so I understand the dad’s enthusiasm wanting to tape everything it’s new, whatever, that’s fine, but they, they, they hear the dog crying outside the kid’s room and they find the kids sleeping together and they kind of have a very brief conversation about how, you know, they’re may be getting a little bit old for that.

And w as they’re talking like the camera pans away from the kids, and then as soon as it pans back, they’re just ominously standing there. And this happens several times. Like they just will appear out 

Todd: of nowhere, like an improbable way. Right? Like it’s, it’s like supernatural 

Craig: feeling. Yeah. And, and not impossible necessarily, but improbable.

Absolutely. And I think Emily. I stood there and Peter herself, I don’t know. They turned the camera off very quickly. Then we get the bedtime story. We come to Claire. She does a work video where she talks about treating her children, patients with meds. This camera actually, they, they acquired. For her work they’re using it personally also.

Todd: Well, I thought this was kind of interesting and it just framed up the movie for some interesting interpretation in that she is a psychologist. So she is a doctor, child psychologist. It just so happened. And so her approach, when things start to get weird with the kids is to look at it very analytically.

And she’s talking about, you know, like you said, her husband’s past and his abuse and all that. He, we learn during their anniversary scene or whatever is, uh, aspiring to be, or is a Lutheran. His approach to this is, is, you know, it’s the whole science versus faith thing, right. Where he’s on intuition. And something’s weird.

We just moved out to the woods. Something’s bizarre. Um, once he goes up and during one scene, he asks one of the kids, actually it happens a couple times. Do you think there’s something weird about this house? Something bad here? Yeah. And so he’s taking a very sort of, faith-based like. Demons and angels approach to the situation as things get progressively worse while the mother eventually the, the kids become her patients more or less.

And she’s talking about just prescribing meds to them and stuff like that. I thought that was an interesting dichotomy. I mean, maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here by saying this, but this has never really resolved. What is wrong with the kids? What is driving them to do what they’re doing? Is there some evil entity?

Are they just completely psychopathic? We never know anything for certain. And I think that’s why. I don’t know, it’s kind of, it’s kind of real life. And also it’s pretty true. I think to the genre where this is just found footage, like how could, how probable is it that all the footage that we assemble from someone’s random home movies at random times is going to answer all of our questions.

So neatly. So I was actually kind of cool with that. And then it just, this is the kind of movie that leads you in the aftermath to kind of really wonder what’s going on here. What did I just see? What is the explanation for it? And multiple explanations are presented to you, but you never get a neat tidy answer on any of that.

And I liked that about the film as well. That was a, I don’t know, some people might call it a cop out, but I think it was well constructed enough. It was deliberately constructed that. And so I actually liked that aspect of the film. Yeah. 

Craig: I think that it was meant to be intentionally ambiguous. And I liked that too.

However, there are just too many things. I mean, it’s possible that these kids are just psychopaths, but there are so many things like the fact that they were born on Halloween and eventually a closet in the club, they were born in the closet. I don’t remember 

Todd: that. No, I’m bringing up. Um, no, what I mean is the whole thing about the guy in the 

Craig: closet.

Yeah. They, but I mean, that’s, they, they say what there’s well, they just say there’s a guy in the closet there hurts them. Yeah. 

Todd: There’s this there’s, it’s probably the fir the first shocking scene that we see. And this is when. Well, the first thing, but it’s when things start to really get real, right? Well, 

Craig: there’s Thanksgiving.

The 

Todd: kids dressed up like pilgrims 

Craig: and they’re impressed that the son has made his own lunch. Will they ask him to show what he made? And he opens up this hamburger bun and it’s got the two pet goldfish in it. And like I have, in my notes, these kids are so fucking weird. And the parents just seem like not to notice, like that’s just not a big deal.

Todd: What we just deal with that. Move on. That’s so stupid. 

Craig: Well, and then at that night, Thanksgiving dinner, when the dad tries to say, grace, the kids keep dropping things on the floor, as soon as he starts to say it. And not only do they start dropping things up on the floor, but they both reach for the same things and drop them in unison.

Todd: Like they planned it, 

Craig: like they planned it or like they’re psychically connected one way or the other, because it’s so insane. Something bothers or offends them or they object. To prayer, uh, which is, and then again, this all happens over holidays. Then we get Christmas and they’re weird at Christmas. Um, they don’t get excited about anything.

And then the dad, I think goes upstairs to fetch something and he finds their family cat crucified on a cross. That is messed up. And at this point I was so mad. I was like, listen, get rid of that dog right now.

Todd: Good boy. You’re like dog. Right away. This is so Ukraine save the pets. My God, there’s something wrong. Get those pets out of there. 

Craig: Okay. Like killing the fish. That’s gross and weird, but crucifying the cat that is psychotic and seriously, then there’s that dog around. And I just knew, and I was telling Alan about it last night and I’m like, and, um, they don’t get rid of the dog and.

Todd: it’s pretty typical for a horror movie. Well, I mean, but you know, my mom, she used to work at a psychiatric facility for preadolescence and she was the head of the pre ad ward. She was there for God 10 or 12 years, and we were constantly reminded usually at the dinner table. Of these warning signs w how you know that kids are troubled, that there’s something wrong with them.

And one of the very first and usually earliest telltale signs is cruelty to animals. Whether they pull wings off of flies, or whether they don’t like to smash bugs or, or hurt cats or something like that, that is usually kind of textbook one-on-one. Early warning sign that there’s something wrong with the kid, even if you see nothing else.

So you would think that this mother who was a child psychologist, like you just said would earlier on be more disturbed at what’s been going down because this is like the third or fourth time that the kids have shown immense cruelty to animals slash the pets in their, in their own 

Craig: home. Yeah, it is a little Emily crushes, a frog and a.

At some point. And then there were a little things that like, I suppose if you were living this life, you. Necessarily think these things were weird, but as an audience member, I’m like, come on. Like when the dad under like the filmmaking does it under the guise of he’s like a scout leader for his son. So he’s teaching him like scout things, but he teaches them how to pick locks.

And how to tie knots that can’t be untied. You were just asking for trouble. 

Todd: Your kids are weird enough as it is. Don’t teach them how 

Craig: to maybe teach them how to make fire with a stick or something. I, gosh, I mean, I understand. Sure. Okay. Those are practical skills, but your kids are also psychotic. So maybe not.

Todd: You just put a frog in a vice let’s not teach you how to, you know, load in and shoot a firearm. You know, that kind of 

Craig: thing. Um, the mom eventually starts to realize that something’s going wrong and this is around Christmas time. I also have it in my notes. There were an inordinate amount of fart jokes in this movie.

Isn’t that 

Todd: weird, right? Why. Why were they so obsessed with

unpack that one. Yeah. 

Craig: Um, new year’s Eve, um, mom is nervous about leaving the kids home alone. There’s clearly tension building between the parents and they kind of get into an argument. I don’t think that they well. I don’t know if they end up going out or not. She goes out, I mean, he’s already drunk and she’s mad about that.

So she goes out and smokes a cigarette. I, uh, want, uh, I want this family to be the family that I thought it would be. And I thought about having a family in the first place, because this isn’t.

I feel like I don’t know these people. I’m not really sure why she’s still carrying the camera around, but the camera pans, and we see dad like seemingly passed out in bed with them, which isn’t weird, but what is weird is that they are covered in severe bite marks. Um, human. Bite marks and the kids say the man in the closet bit them, but the wife is convinced that it was the dad and she decides to leave him and.

In the following days. Valentine’s day. Yeah. Valentine’s day. They have a big blow up fight and she says that she’s leaving, but then things change and this is not predictable, but it’s the logical progression. Um, you know, these, these kids have been killing and torturing animals. What happens next is the logical progression, 

Todd: right?

It’s an interesting scene. Actually. I think that dad goes upstairs. Um, Emily is in the attic and I got the impression. That they moved them up there. They 

Craig: separated them. Yeah. And put her up there by herself because of what happened at school. Don’t 

Todd: you remember? Right. Oh yeah. At school. Yeah. What happened at school was that they cornered a kid into the bathroom and they bit him severely just bit him all over.

And so of course the mom now realizes, well, the kids did it to themselves. And not, you know, clearly the father did not. And so they separated the kids and dad goes upstairs and confronts Emily and it’s, it’s, you know, the way everything is shot with the kids. Like you said, they’re just creepy as hell. And you’re just on the edge of your seat, just waiting for all hell to break loose.

I sorta feel like, you know, because she’s facing this open window, the window shade kind of flies up by itself. 

Craig: The window shade is down or something, and then it immediately flies up. Let me explain that. 

Todd: Yeah. Without her making a move, right. I know. Yeah, no, the more we talk about it, the more I’m kind of like the argument for this, just being supernatural is pretty, pretty strong.

The dad goes and sits down next to her. Now we can see him and this is how it is through the whole movie. Dad and mom are kind of the star, the stars of the show. Um, and the kids are there, but they’re creepy and quiet and sometimes half hidden. And sometimes, you know, and, and, and she’s facing towards the window and he’s talking to her and this is where he goes.

Look, um, Emily, why did you do that? Is there something about this house? And then. Turns her head for the first time where she just been staring off into space this whole time and not. 

Craig: Yeah. See, and I think that there’s something important about the wording, because he says, is there something bad in this house?

And I think that. Relevant like us, she could be referring to them. 

Todd: Hmm, no, but then she says the closet, right? I don’t remember. I can’t remember if she says the closet because she hardly ever speaks. Or if he says something about the closet, because they had earlier blamed the man in the closet 

Craig: she asked 

Todd: about, or he asks about it.

I think either way the closet is brought up and she affirms or says like, It’s the closet. Cause he said he talks about angels and demons, you know? Um, are there bad things in this house? She nods, blah, blah, blah. Mom comes upstairs, takes the camera away. Gives a Rorschach. Rorschach. How do you say were shots Rorschach Worshack test to the boy, which we don’t even really get 

Craig: because it’s fast forwarded through.

That’s the other thing you have to wonder who is controlling this, like who is controlling, what we’re seeing, because there are moments when it gets fast forwarded moments, when it gets rewinding and things are repeated. It’s really interesting. And I think that that question is answered at the end, but yeah, you can see that he’s talking to her and telling her things, but we don’t get to hear what he said.

And went straight and when they’re done it, it starts playing at normal speed again. And she seems a little perturbed.

Todd: She does. Now. I’m glad you brought this up because. I had a huge question about this rewinding and fast-forwarding because this happens what maybe half a dozen times, maybe five times in the movie where there’s a bit that plays and it seems kind of insignificant. And then the camera, again, rewinds to this other spot and replay is a line or two from somebody there.

And I’ll be damned if I could figure out. I mean, I’m like, there’s a reason for this. There must be something significant why we’re supposed to pay close attention to this specific bit or the specific line that was said this one time, but I’ll 

Craig: be darned. Yeah. I’m not sure I know either. Right. Cause I don’t even remember.

I like some of the lines, they don’t seem particularly significant. Why would either the person watching want to see them over and over again? Like, are they taking some sort of pleasure in seeing them over and over again? Or do they. Us to see them over and over again. I’m not, 

it’s 

Todd: what I was sure.

Thinking. I was thinking it was, I mean, I, natural was thinking it’s because of us. And, but then I was looking visually too, you know, I’m thinking, is there something I missed visually in the picture that I’m supposed to catch? The second time around, I was looking in the background. I was looking at all the people in there, you know, trying to figure out what it was.

I never could. And then I was like, are they. Screwing with us, you know, are the filmmakers just trying to amp up the creepiness factor by randomly sort of throwing in these bits that are just making us more curious and, and, or aware of the fact that we’re watching something that was put together by someone for us, 

Craig: right.

Right. And it’s effective. Um, this is the point where it really does become the parents trying to handle things in their own specialty. The mom decides that she’s going to put the kids on medications and she puts them on like, anti-psychotics. I think one of the ones that she mentioned is Halla doll, and I know that that is heavy stuff and she even.

Um, yeah, you’ve been on it for years. No,

Todd: I prefer, 

Craig: I prefer my crazy the way it is, but, uh, and, and she, she tells them that they’re gonna be on these medications, but she also makes a point of saying you must never, ever take more than one pill at a time. Um, because it will put you into a waking coma. Well, good. They know that now. Right? 

Todd: Put that right up.

You know, teaching them lockpicking 

Craig: um, meanwhile, the dad starts performing an exorcism and it seems like he’s trying to exercise the house because he’s in the kids’ room. Um, and it’s dark and he starts performing the exorcism and that damn dragon. Is around. Um, but then in the middle of the exorcism, the children just appear out of nowhere.

Again, like it’s a camp, like the camera pans away from their bed for a split second, and then it pans back and they’re there. 

Todd: This is why I bring up the closet because the dad looks in the closet. He shakes his holy water in the closet. This is my house. These are my 

Craig: children. 

Todd: Children alone at my house and he closes the closet and he, you, he turns this latch thing on the closet.

And when he pans the camera over towards their bed, When the kids are not there, suddenly he hears a noise and this all happens within like two seconds. He pants the camera back over and the closet is wide open. So that’s why, like I said earlier, I think the closet, I mean, if you’re going to try to find.

Uh, source for it or whatever. They’re talking about. The clause that the Dragon’s hanging in the closet, he just closed the door, pans, the camera back over it’s inexplicably opened again. And that’s where the noise came from. And then as you said, the camera pans back over and the kids are both just suddenly sitting there on the bed.

But anyway, 

Craig: once they’re in there, the dad. Holds them down and, and ties them to the bed. And the mom’s like beating on the door and he’s continuing with the exorcism. Now here is where I feel like, how can you deny? Because it felt supernatural to me. And then when he’s done, he stands up and he tells the mom it’s it’s over, you know, every, every it’s fine now, but 

Todd: let me just, before we move on from this, let me just say what a heartbreaking scene.

What was going through my head is these are two parents at their end of their rope. And they’re doing this extreme thing and the kids are obviously distressed this. I mean, if you were just to walk in on what’s going on, you know, the father has tied his kids to the bed. He’s on top of them. He’s holding them down, they’re screaming.

Uh, and you know, he’s seems like the crazy, this guy who also has a history of was abused as a child. And so, you know, the mother has already expressed concerns about this. Walks into the room. What’s her first thought, you know, she mitts later on in the movie that she doesn’t believe in God at all. So look, I’ve, I’ve kind of, I haven’t been there.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t been there. My kid is so far as I can tell, not psychotic, but I know as a parent, how you feel kind of at the end of your rope, right? Your kid is just. Not responding rationally. He’s not doing the things he’s supposed to do. He’s not listening to you. He’s not, he’s just, you don’t understand it.

And even, even giving allowances to the fact that I know he’s a kid, his brain isn’t properly developed yet. He doesn’t have these XYZ skills and XYZ ability to manage his emotions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You still feel like sometimes like my God, what I’m supposed to do as a parent. It’s something extreme to shock them, to like finally teach them like, this is not okay.

You think this is funny. Uh, you’ve been doing this off and on for the last three months and we kind of put up with it, but no, no words are working. And so I’ve got to change tactics and I’ve got to like, do something emotional and visceral and whatever to like, get your attention and get it through your brain that what’s going on is not cool.

Okay. Then when you do that, you step back from it and Amelie, you feel a little guilty and you feel bad. You know, it’s just, it’s a shitty position that I think probably most parents find themselves in at one point or another. And so somehow, obviously not to this degree, but I could relate to the general idea.

Of the situation. These, these mother and father had found themselves in the extreme measures they’re doing what they truly believe in their hearts is necessary in their own ways to deal with it. And from an outside person observing it, it. Crazy. 

Craig: Right. I can also imagine as a parent that you would desperately want not to believe that your, there was something wrong with your kid.

Now, w what’s going on here of course is extreme, but mental illness and behavioral problems are very. Things. Yeah. And every psycho killer was somebody’s kid, but you would never want to think that about your own kid. And I can imagine why I can’t imagine. Being in such denial for so long, but I’m not a parent.

So I don’t know. What I do know is that the next, the dad says it’s over. And the next holiday we cut to his Easter and miraculously and the mom tells us this through voiceover narration. Are fine. They’re perfectly normal. All their anti-social violent, aggressive behavior has been, um, eliminated by the medications.

Their behavior is, is so good that they’ve actually been permitted back in school. They’ve even befriended the kid that they assaulted and they invited him over. For Easter for an Easter egg hunt, one, why would this kid’s parents allow him to go to their house? Do they hate 

Todd: him? 

Craig: Secondly, these parents are so likable, as far as personalities are concerned, but they are stupid like that.

You know, it’s Easter and everything’s great. And the dad’s in an Easter bunny costume. They leave their kids upstairs with this other kid watching TV. The dad goes in and checks on them and the kids are super friendly and everything seems fine. And the dad tells each of them separately that he loves them and they both say they love him too.

And then the mom and dad are downstairs, like filling Easter eggs or whatever. And then it’s time for the Easter egg hunt. So they go to get the kids and the kids aren’t in there. They’ve set up nativity. Figures to look like them sitting there, but they’re gone and they’re out the window. They’ve made a rope out of sheets or something and they’re out the window.

So the dad goes running, looking for them to their clubhouse. And you just know what who’s got to find some sort of nightmare, which. I mean, the first thing he finds is the dog’s head on a pike. Like I told you get rid of that dog, but the dogs head on a pike and then he goes into the clubhouse and there’s all these like satanic, violent pictures, pasted all around.

There’s this huge illustration of a two headed dragon, like. One big wall. And then he goes into like, what looks like the back room of the clubhouse? Like how big is this clubhouse? 

Todd: And 

Craig: he finds, yeah. And he finds the kids standing over this poor kid that they had invited over. They’ve got him in a trash bag and they’re holding like.

Implements now, I don’t know if they had actually started torturing these kids are yet not, but then the next scene I felt like was. Maybe the most heartbreaking, but also the most real when it’s just, it cuts away from this horrible scene of violence to just the parents sitting in like kitchen chairs in front of the fireplace.

And the dad says against our wishes because it’s Easter Sunday, the department of children and family services. I said that we have to maintain custody of the kids until we can have a hearing tomorrow. I don’t believe that no, 

Todd: first of all, it doesn’t happen that way. 

Craig: No. Um, those kids would be in juvie for sure.

Todd: Some cop is on duty at this point and would’ve, would’ve gladly hauled them off. 

Craig: Right. But they say. That they’re going to be charged with illegal restraint and attempted murder or something. They’re going to be in juvenile hall, at least until they’re 18 or whatever. And this part is sad because whereas the mom kind of, I think she just is holding it better, holding it together better.

And I think that she just understands that. Has to be the way it is, but the dad, despite everything that’s happened is in morning, as I can only imagine that you would be, you know, they’re still your kids. 

Todd: He said some very genuine things there he’s he literally says that he’s like, there’s still my son and I, how can I help?

But love my son and my sweet, sweet daughter. It is, it is heartbreaking. And it does call, call into question, like, like what were these kids like before. I don’t know, year or whatever it was, you know, the point at which they started clamming up and being weird. I mean, there’s a whole relationship. They’re building up to this turning point that, that we never get to see.

Right. I don’t know if that’s a fault of the movie or not. I mean, I guess it just is what it is. I, I kinda kind of want to see. 

Craig: Yeah, but I kinda, I kind of like that. We don’t know. I kinda like that. Uh, it’s just unexplained and we don’t know. Have they always been weird? I don’t know. I mean, again, we know that they moved out there in the hopes that their family dynamic would improve.

So they’ve clearly been having some issues for a while, but anyway, there’s that very sad, heartbreaking moment. And then the camera shuts down and then it comes back on. And now the kids have the camera and they’re making their own movie and he is now talking directly to them. Hi and welcome to the Jack and Emily show.

I’m Jack and Natalie let’s have some fun. You’re quiet in there. I can’t even hear you, but I know you’re there. What type of staring contest I dare you to stare until our movie’s done. And at this point, The kids have been in charge of screening this movie for us the whole time. 

Todd: Yeah. That’s what 

Craig: I thought too.

And this, I mean, it’s just, you watch them. It’s just, it’s so dread, inducing. Like I was just, you know, it’s going to be horrible and you watch the kids gather nails and a hammer and a baseball bat and they like set up nails poking up in the lawn. They cut the lights, they cut the phone line. The sun picks the lock into the mom and dad’s room where they’re just laying on top of their comfort or fully clothed holding one another asleep 

Todd: are these dumb ass parents with these psychotic kids.

Who’ve got them for one more night, have decided to just fall asleep. Right? I would have been up all night, man. I live it up all night with those psychotic kids, Micah, the kids 

Craig: knock them out with the baseball bat, beat the crap out of the dad, tied them. Set them up at the dining room table and all of this happens very quickly and it’s very brutal.

The mom’s able to free herself, but she can’t call the police cause the lines. She goes upstairs, looking for the baseball bat. They’ve stabbed her in the arm. They’re now wearing their Japanese dragon masks. Again, somehow the mom gets the camera and the bat back and the parents are free and they’re going to leave.

They’ve got a little overnight bag packed for the kids, and this is all happening very quickly, but she, she looks at the kids and says, you are not our children. I don’t know what you are. But then the dad goes to grab something. He complains a little bit of a headache and, you know, just seconds after that, he’s out of frame, but we hear what ends up being him falling.

And the mom finds him. The fire alarm goes off, which leads the mom to the stove where she finds all of the kids pills like open and dumped out next to this soup that I guess that they had 

Todd: fed the parent. I guess I was a little unclear on that bit and the soup was in front of the parents. I didn’t see.

We didn’t see them. Yeah. We didn’t see them 

Craig: eat it. Yeah. I don’t know, like why would they, but I don’t know. The mom runs out. I mean, she’s drunk now too. And realizes it. She, uh, runs out and then she almost makes it to the road. As the ice cream truck is passing, but she passes out. They drag her back to the house.

In their wagon. And the last thing that we see the very last scene, and it’s so chilling are this the kids sitting on either side of the table, each of them holding up a fork and a knife wearing paper, sack masks, like the two headed dragon in the story did, and the parents tied up in trash bags on the kitchen table, just like thrashing, trying to escape.

Then it just cuts out and that’s the end. Yeah. It’s really dark. The, the thing, you know, talking about it. I, I really do think it’s a well-made movie, especially for a first outing as a director. I think that it’s good. I do think that it’s well-written and there’s lots of careful attention to imagery and, um, I think there are a lot of, um, suggested motifs and things through the images.

Tie things together. I was ultimately left thinking that these kids are evil. For whatever reason. I have no idea why, but they are evil. And this two headed dragon is a representation of them. The thing yesterday after I was done watching. The way that I was left feeling was that I thought that it was a well-made movie, but I didn’t know how I felt about it because it was so grim.

And so nihilistic that I just kind of felt. Well, no, it made me, I, it just kinda made me feel dirty. Like I kind of wanted to go take a shower. It was just like, Ugh, like I just wanted to get this off me, you know? 

Todd: I mean, I understand how you feel and I agree with you about how grim and nihilistic it is and, and the feeling you’re supposed to get.

I think for me, it was, and that made it one note. The movie starts, the kids are. And they continue to be creepy throughout. They do all the things you expect creepy kid to do. And, you know, you just know that the parents are going to get it and they do. And I don’t know, I just, maybe I think it was the lack of answers that provided any kind of satisfying aha moments or anything like that, that I just felt like I was just watching something go bad that I knew was going to go bad from the very start.

And I’m more or less. It could have gone bad and in any number of ways and the way it ended up going bad wasn’t particularly, I don’t know, ironic or anything like that, you know, just, I mean, yeah, the dragon motif you’re right. That was kind of maybe the thing there. I dunno, I was kind of nonplussed by the movie, to be honest.

Yes, I was disturbing, but we’ve seen a lot of disturbing stuff. And so I’m kind of numb to that. I, I want a little bit more than just seeing something disturbing play out on the screen and I don’t feel like this movie gave me much more than. Honestly. So I was a little disappointed in that regard in 2008, when found footage films were still more of a novelty.

I mean, remember that’s like, God, that’s like 12 years ago. So the film probably would have had more of an impact since then. I I’ve seen so much along these lines done so much better that maybe would have had a different impact on me then than it did now. So, you know, compared to Blair, which, I mean, it’s, it’s a way better.

If you’re going to just compare the genre and the way that they executed it, but. Compared to anything I’ve seen since I was kinda like, eh, okay. Uh, I probably won’t watch this again. I’ll probably forget a lot about it later. 

Craig: Um, yeah. I don’t know that I would watch, I don’t think I would watch it again either.

And that’s what I was, I was saying, you know, usually I try to think about who would like this, who is this the right movie for? And I just don’t know, like, I don’t even know that I would. Recommended this, yeah, this I, it certainly wouldn’t be even in the E it wouldn’t be on the list of movies that I would recommend unless somebody said, I just want something really dark.

Okay. 

Todd: That was one of many 

Craig: really. And yeah. And I don’t want to be too down on it because I don’t think that it’s a bad movie. I don’t think it’s poorly made. I think that the acting is pretty strong on. Around. And I did feel sympathy, genuine sympathy for the parents, even though I thought they made some really foolish decisions, but I think that you could justify those decisions with their love of their kids.

In my opinion, I am not trying to give it a negative review. It’s just kind of difficult to say, oh man. Yeah, there’s a great. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. I totally agree with you there, but, but thank you so much to Alec for recommending it to us. I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise would have been hard to find otherwise good luck finding it folks, but there are other films you can watch.

Instead. I’ve been thinking actually, maybe we ought to do like a creepy kid theme month or something like that. It wouldn’t be hard. Yeah. It’d be interesting to kind of like, uh, compare the different ways this topic is approached and. For the years. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode.

If you enjoy this podcast, please share us with a friend. If like Alec, you want to recommend a movie for us to watch and Jabber on about. You can find us online. If you just searched two guys in a chainsaw podcast, you’ll find our Facebook page or Twitter feed and our website. Just leave us a message in any one of those spots and tell us the movie you want us to see and we’ll get to it until next time.

I’m Todd and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Barry Levinson’s eco-thriller from 2012 is remarkably prescient and just as applicable to the situation we find ourselves in today. That makes the horror even scarier.

We’re fans of the “found footage” conceit, and this faux-documentary gives a slightly different spin on the genre.

The Bay (2012)

Episode 269, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, Craig, I believe you chose the movie. 

Craig: yeah, randomly in the summertime. My sleep schedule gets all screwed up because I’m not working. And so a lot of times I do a good amount of sleeping during the day, which then leads me to be up all night. And I was just scanning through.

The various streaming services that, uh, I have, and I was, uh, going through HBO max and this movie came up The Bay from 2012. And actually I had seen this movie before, but, you know, I was, I was just putting it on to like have on while I was laying down. And if I went to sleep. Fine cause I’ve seen it, but I ended up watching the whole thing and I thought it would be interesting to talk about.

I think it’ll be weird to talk about because it’s different than the kind of movies we usually do. I mean, there, there is a narrative, there is a story, but. Really aren’t any, I mean, there are some characters, um, that appear more than others, but it’s not really super focused on any one character or a small group of characters.

Um, it’s, it’s set up like a documentary. I mean, it is a photo documentary. Um, it actually feels pretty real in the way that it’s put together. I think if you just stumbled upon this and you didn’t know that it was. A feature film, as opposed to an actual documentary, you could easily be fooled, but, uh, just because of the way that it’s set up, I don’t know.

I feel like it’s going to be kind of weird to talk about, but you know, we’ll, we’ll see what we can do. 

Todd: It’s interesting because, uh, the movie was, was not fantastically received. I guess people, lot of people liked it. Some people didn’t, uh, I think it has like a 7,600. Ray approval rating on rotten tomatoes.

You know, I went and I read Roger Ebert’s review of it because, you know, I like to do that. And I thought, I thought what he had to say was quite unfair. Actually. He said, eh, it’s less of a horror movie and more of like an eco. Thriller or whatever. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a horror movie. Like great. We do a lot of eco thriller horror movies.

Like we did Gator, you know, and jaws. And there are a ton of horror movies that, uh, involve the natural world kind of going out of control. I think one of the freakiest ones we had seen up to this point was the beach. Was that what it was called? Beach, the beach 

Craig: house, maybe. 

Todd: Yeah, that was it. And that’s like nightmarish and sometimes it’s, it’s even more nightmarish really than the Freddy Krueger jumping out at you.

Cause you ultimately know that’s not real. Whereas a movie like this puts things in a context and gives a lot of, um, I mean, I feel like this could happen, you know, and especially since we’re going through a pandemic, right. This is just the kind of movie, you know, the sort of eco disaster we’re living an eco disaster horror movie in some ways.

And so that makes us move even more unsettling because it’s, it’s just a little closer to home than probably it felt like in the year, 2012. So I don’t see that as a criticism at all. I was pretty much scratching my head at that being criticism of this movie. Like you said, it is a photo documentary. It is it’s I mean, found.

Not really, I, it is sort of a found footage movie, but like you said, it’s, it’s more of a, a documentary that was pieced together out of footage, like a news reporter or a documentarian would do. And that’s the conceit of the movie. There is a woman and her name is Donna, right? Yeah. And she is basically a journalist in this.

Or was yeah, was 

Craig: the events of the movie supposedly took place in 2009, but she is doing this interview. Um, I guess what would amount to an expos a several years later, but the, the, the, the events that transpired were so traumatic to her that she. Quit journalism altogether. And this is the first time that she’s talked about it.

And, and according to her, and according to whoever it is behind this documentary, these events have never been. Reported on before, which once you see what has happened, you would think, how could we not know about this? You know, um, how could this go unreported? But with all the conspiracy theories that are constantly flying around in the world today, you almost just don’t know what to believe.

I, you know, my willing suspension of disbelief was, you know, Yeah, it’s something I’ve covered this up. I don’t know 

Todd: exactly, exactly what you mean anymore. You just throw your hands in the air and go, oh, okay. I’ll go along with it. It’s true though. In some ways the movie is a little bit ahead of its time.

Isn’t it? This is the kind of thing you would see amateur. Well, you do see. And mature documentarians throwing together up on YouTube. 

Craig: Well, and on podcasts, I feel like, oh, you know, obviously this doesn’t take. Route, but there are so many podcasts out there now about unexplained phenomenon, conspiracy theories, and whatnot.

This seems like exactly the kind of thing that you would find on one of those podcasts. But yeah. Um, it, it works. I mean, I honestly, like I said, it feels very much like a documentary. I didn’t recognize any of them. I don’t think so. You’re. Pulled out, you know, it’s not like, oh, this is supposed to be a documentary, but Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are in it.

So obviously it’s not, you know what I mean? Like these, these aren’t familiar faces. These could be real people. Everything feels very natural. And even the horrors that ecological horror is that, um, are present here. Do not seem farfetched at all.

Todd: And we said the same thing, I think about the beach house. Didn’t we, and I think the conceit of that was that, uh, it was down in the bottom of the ocean, some events that, you know, those there’s constant volcanic activity happening beneath the ocean and all kinds of creatures were learning. Right? Yeah.

That can survive in super, super hot environments, um, that were kind of unknown and something kind of like there’s a little, a little earthquake or something, and that just sort of breaks apart and releases some kind of bacteria or something into the water. Uh, in this case, as the movie goes along, we’re led to believe that it’s a manmade.

Again, it’s like a warning, right? Oh, we’ve we’ve, we’ve let the waters get too dirty. We’ve covered things up. We’ve dumped a, to toxic waste into the water kind of thing. Runoff from the, I think as a nuclear power plant runoff down the way I’m 

Craig: not here. Well, I mean, you know, that’s, that’s very typical in these types of movies, but even that, I mean, Of course, you know, uh, during the nuclear crisis, there were lots of, lots of these, right?

Lots of those types of movies, but this is, this hits very much closer to home because not that we don’t have nuclear facilities, we do. But, um, this actually is just it’s uh, like a fish plant or no chickens, chickens. Yeah. It’s like a FA a chicken factory farm. And, um, all of the waste from these chickens is just, you know, piled up near the waters of the Chesapeake bay and not only.

Is that dangerous in itself because you know, you get a lot of waste material and your water that’s dangerous, but also these chickens are treated with growth hormones and various other hormones. So that is in their waste as well. And that’s what ends up getting in the water and causes. This problem. And the reason that I say the reason that I say that it hits close to home is because I live in the Midwest in the states.

And, um, we have very, very near where I live. I live in Missouri and this, and in Iowa, right directly above us, they have these enormous. Hog FA factories. These, these factory farms were just thousands upon thousands of hogs are kept in relatively small spaces and enclosures. Um, and of course they produce a lot of waste and that waste has to be processed in some ways.

And there’s a lot of concern about the environmental impact of that. Um, so this is something. That I have, I have seen in the news and something that is a real concern. So when you see it here, yeah. I believe this. I believe that corporate industry has less concern about. The impact of their practices, then maybe they should.

And when you live in a capitalist country, a society money makes the world go round and corners are cut. And, you know, even legislation like in this, they talk about how. There are certain levels of waste and hormone that are permissible, as long as they stay just below that level of a permissible, whatever, then they get away with it.

Uh, and, and I really think that not maybe something as dramatic as what happens here, but I think. Probably have been and certainly could be some pretty serious consequences to all of 

Todd: that. Well, and that, um, you know, is, is exactly what led Barry Levinson, who is the director of this film, uh, to make the movie, he was originally approached to make a Dr.

Uh, he’s from Maryland. And so the Chesapeake bay is quite close to his home. And so he had a little bit of a personal attachment to this area and he was approached to do a documentary about the problems facing Chesapeake bay, because it does really have issues, pollution and the water and, um, fish dying off and the fishing being difficult there, but he kind of learned that frontline had already done a thing on it and he was sorta like, you know, nobody’s gonna get.

Nobody’s really going to care, but maybe I could make them care. If I made a bit of entertainment out of it. If I actually took the same content. And he claims, you know, 80% factual information in this movie, obviously not the events that went down, but a lot of the facts in this movie about the bay and a lot of the facts about nature and things like that.

And even like you said, the facts that we do. These problems of corporations and animal waste and, and stuff not being properly dealt with all of that is quite factual. Uh, but then he put it together into this, you know, story that isn’t quite as fantastical as it, as we wish it were. And, and this way it it’s an interesting method of ad.

Advocacy advocacy, advocacy, advocacy, and activism. It’s an interesting way to activate people, right. Is give them this horror, but it it’s, it’s kind of real. It can be real. And, uh, I don’t know, like I said, I it’s so odd to me that people criticized the movie as that way. I don’t know if it’s the same sort of people that just don’t like being preached to, or, you know, we’re just hypersensitive to two messages being in their movies or whatever.

Definitely a message here in this film. And we, it’s not the first time. It’s not even the first time we’ve dealt with this. Didn’t even an alligator, right? Wasn’t that about? They were experimenting on dogs and growth hormones and things. Those dogs got dumped into the sewer. And then the alligator pet that got loose was eating the dogs.

And that was the deal. So it’s certainly none of it’s terribly original in that regard, but the presentation is fantastic. It also, I think what really makes it horrifying to me, and this is how you kind of sold me on the film in the beginning, as you were like, You remember the memes going around about that louse that like basically enters a fish through its gills, eats away its tongue and then attaches itself to its tog.

And it’s basically becomes a fish tongue and I’m like, oh God. Yeah. That’s like the most disgusting thing. Horrifying real life thing that apparently just is a fact of life and nature. 

Craig: It’s a real thing. And I don’t remember what drew my attention to it initially, but yeah. Seeing, I mean, you see these images of fish with its mouth open and just this little alien looking creature, just nested in its mouth.

And these are real things there, I suppose, I suppose, are apparently, you know, Prolific and real and, and, you know, they, they exist in nature in this ancient. Yeah. And this, this particular one, uh, I, I have no idea if I’m pronouncing this correctly, but say Mota exigua or, or something like that, um, which they talk about in the.

Movie and they show the Wikipedia page, which I’m looking at right now. Um, it’s a real, it’s a real thing. It’s a tongue eating Laos. It’s a, a parasitic, I suppose. And the females attack, they get into a fish and the females attack. Themselves to the fishes tongue, eat the tongue and then implant themselves and basically become the fishes tongue.

And then they can continue to get food from whatever the fish eats. And they also eat, like, I don’t know, secretions from the fish and stuff. The females are bigger and they attach to the tongue, the male. Are smaller and attached to the gills, uh, behind the tongue and in nature. Now they are largely harmless.

You know, these, these fish can go on living with these other organisms in them. If they get hungry enough, they can begin to eat the fish from. Inside, but I don’t think that that’s what they commonly do. Um, when the fish dies, they will eat it, uh, as much as they want. And then they’ll exit and look for another host.

Um, but it’s just the real thing go to the Wikipedia page or just Google it, you know, go fish ice, a pot or whatever. And it looks like a night. But it’s real. And so and so to take, so to take something like that, that really does exist and they don’t even have to change it very much. All they say is, um, because of all of this growth hormone that’s being released into the Chesapeake bay, um, these things have started to grow, uh, and they’ve become more aggressive, which also is a side effect of.

Growth hormone in animals, whether it be livestock or whatever it is, animals that are given growth hormone do get larger, um, and often become more aggressive. So it, it, it. You don’t have to stretch your imagination to believe that this could have 

Todd: well, and one of the things that said in the movie, and then I was like, no way was there talking, I think it’s, the CDC is giving a little report once they kind of figure out what this is.

And somebody says that these things are known to grow large and they can be large. And they show this picture of this one that looks like a foot long. And I’m like, okay, that’s that? Can’t be true. And then I Googled it and yeah, these things come in all shapes and all sizes really. And, uh, Without the growth hormones in nature, these things can get big freaky as hell, just, just freaky as hell.

So it adds a little bit of, um, extra creepiness to the mood he wouldn’t eat when you can Google it afterwards and go, oh my God, it’s right. You know, like all this stuff can really happen. Well, 

Craig: and the other thing, and it’s freaky about it is the movie opens up with news footage of, um, Dead fish floating and bodies of water in mass.

And it talks about like unexplained phenomenon of all of these fish dying and not just fish, but birds and these things do happen. Um, in fact, um, they say somewhere in the movie that the. Chesapeake bay is something like 75% or 80% dead. Much of the fish population has been killed off because of, uh, pollution and whatnot.

And that’s true. I don’t know. I couldn’t really find out, but it is. A lot of the news footage that they show looks very real. And I suspect that it probably is because these things do happen. And, uh, you know, the, the movie says, scientists don’t know what killed them. That, you know, in many cases that may be the case.

And sometimes they figure it out, whatever. Uh, but, uh, Donna is doing this interview and she talks about how she was a communications major and she was covering the July 4th celebration. In Claridge, Maryland, which I think is a fictional town, a beachfront town on, on the Chesapeake bay and the juxtaposition of the horrors of what.

We have what man or mankind, um, is doing to nature. It’s juxtaposed against the beauty of the nature, because the bay is just absolutely gorgeous. Like I want to move there and live there. 

Todd: Like we’ve got a ton of fun, right? Like the wind surfing and they’re having there. And I mean, didn’t this hit a little close to home, like this community.

Reminded me a lot of, um, of our small town community, where they’ve got their cute little local traditions and they’ve got their crabby eating contest and whatever, and it, even though it’s on the east coast, you can tell this as a bit of a smaller town city feel to it in their traditions. And in the way people act towards each other, they’ve got, you know, games going on, dunking booth and all that stuff.

And, uh, and this woman who is a communications major is working on. Obviously small market, local news station sent out to just cover these fluff bits of this celebration while she’s also being a little critical of the mayor, giving us a little bit of foreshadowing and saying that, you know, he seems real nice.

He’s real kind. And he was elected this, that and the other. And you could sit down with him outside. She has a little interview with him, like in front of a coffee shop, just sitting on the street, you know, very, very small. All of this stuff was, um, but then she says, but you know, later what I realized is implication in all of this and his corporate data was complacent for what would happen.

And so that there’s, you know, there’s a little bit of foreshadowing going on right from the beginning. And then we have these sort of different narrative threads going on while there’s that she’s also giving us information and showing footage of a, I think it’s Stephanie and Alex, they’re a couple who are sailing to Claridge with their, they have a newborn baby with their baby out there.

I mean, you start seeing this stuff and you’re like, oh God, well, the only reason we’re seeing. Stuff has, because it’s going to somehow end in disaster, threw a baby in there and you’re just like, oh, okay. Is it, is the movie going to go there? I remember those one of my first thoughts when I was seeing this bit.

And then there are two researchers, uh, who were, uh, going out there as well. Uh, Jacquelyn and Sam, 

Craig: I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’re they’re scientists. And they actually, all of the stuff with the scientists is actually flashbacks because it had happened weeks prior. Right. Right. But they, they were exploring, you know, why are these, I don’t know what they were studying the fish.

Um, and they were collecting fish and studying them and they started finding. These ice pods in the fish, which again is not unusual. It is a natural occurrence. Um, but all these fish are dying and this is all broken up into short clips. So you’ll see a little bit of one person’s story and then it’ll cut back to somebody else’s.

So the whole scientist thing is spread out over a while, but what happens is. They notice that the ISO pods are larger than they normally are. Um, they seem to be bright more numerous, um, and, and they are, uh, killing the fish and eating the fish from the inside out, which is uncommon. Um, and so they want to explore further and eventually.

They just, and it’s funny because they’re filming all of this themselves, and they’re trying to make it like as professional as possible, which is kind of funny. The guy is super concerned about like angles and, but eventually they go down to explore, um, and through, yeah. Point of view their cameras. We see that they are attacked, um, aggressively.

That 

Todd: was nuts there I’ll I will say this movie for being just more or less a documentary still has horror roots. There were some serious jump scares in this. I jumped three or four times. You know, if you can get me to jump three or four times during a horror movie nowadays, you’re doing pretty well. And, uh, that scene where they’re diving down there and the camera just kind of like whips towards him and suddenly one of these Eissa pods, it just goes for his eye.

Right. I don’t know if this even makes sense really, but it shoots through the water straight to it, into his, um, what’s it. What’s that called? The thing you, wherever your eyes, God. And just like that. And I was like, oh my God, that’s horrifying. As a scuba diver. Uh, you, you want it, you want to make a horror movie, you know, setting it in the water is, is perfect because that is a nightmarish land of the unknown for us still.

And it’s right beneath our feet. We have really still scratched the surface of what’s down there. And so whenever I have gone diving, it always feels exciting and a little dangerous, you know, not just being underwater, but just like what kind of crazy weird ass things could be right around the corner.

You know, that you don’t know about and that all these different kinds of fish sharks things that’s, what’s so thrilling about doing that. So, uh, it’s totally within the realm of possibility that you’re going to encounter something pretty freaky. All of a sudden when you’re diving under the water 

Craig: and.

Yeah. I mean, there’s that I, I enjoy swimming in the ocean. I’ve never, um, dove, uh, and I don’t know that I ever would. It, it scares me a little bit, but I very much enjoy the water, but that’s something else, you know, as, as unknown, you know, it’s almost like space basically. Um, it’s treacherous, it’s unknown.

That’s scary. But the other scary thing is we’re seeing all of this footage, fun, like festival festivities. Footage of this small town, like you said, it is a very small community, but it’s also a tourist community. So there’s a lot of people there there’s a lot of stuff going on, but the filmmaker, uh, the director Levinson makes a point of showing how much of these festivities and just life in general center around water.

If there’s something wrong with the water. Like you really? Yeah. You can’t escape that. I mean, you see people swimming and skiing and like you mentioned, there’s a dunking booth and just people, you know, Yeah, splashing their faces, drinking water, kids, jumping in sprinklers, you know, just water, water, everywhere,

which makes perfect sense. It’s very much an everyday part. Uh, American life in the summertime. Uh, we, we flock to destinations specifically for water and what happens, you know, the, the first signs that something is wrong, our people start getting these rashes on their skin and the first nightmarish. And I think that it was.

To do this. They, instead of just like, you know, oh, a couple people have a little something itchy on their skin that does happen, but not before we see this larger woman who we had seen in the dunking booth, she had been dunked in the dunking booth. We see her ambling down the street, crying out for help crying for her husband.

And she is just covered head to toe. Horrible rash and these boils, um, and of course everybody’s freaked out and I think they eventually get her to a hospital, but then this starts happening more and more. And eventually the ER, you know, has eight cases and then 15 cases and then 30 cases. And, and just, um, and, and on some people, the effects, the makeup is disgusting and it looks.

Real enough to me. And, uh, you know, just these people going to the doctor and saying, you know, I’ve got this, something on my back and they lift up their shirt and it’s just, you know, it looks like worse than like third degree burns. Like it’s just, it’s so nasty. Um, And as it, and then as it starts to affect more and more people, you realize that they’re in big trouble and the doctor, the ER, doctor in this small town, like he’s like the one, ER, doctor in the small town he’s completely overwhelmed.

Um, and he can’t figure out what it is. So he contacts the CDC and the CDC is absolutely shocked to find that it’s affecting so many people. They say. Some, you know, things like this have happened before and we’ve lost, you know, Eight or nine people or whatever. And they’re like, how many people do you have?

And he’s like a 120, like in there, the CDC has no idea. And so that’s what we continue to see the interactions between this poor doctor and the CDC who really don’t know what’s going on. They’re trying to figure out eventually they, they kind of do, but it’s these it’s it’s, it’s the I supplies. 

Todd: Yeah, they’re getting into people and they’re eating their way out.

They start 

Craig: finding bodies. Um, the first body they find is just along the side of the street and it has holes in it. And they had found, I think they had found the divers that the, um, the scientists, uh, and they, they couldn’t explain. Their wounds, but they said, well, sometimes sharks get up in here, even though it doesn’t really look like shark bites, that’s the best thing they could come up with.

So they’re not sure. Well, now these things are happening on land. And at first they think it’s maybe gunshot wounds. They think they’re looking for a killer, but then it just starts happening more and more until eventually. I mean, it’s just pandemonium. 

Todd: And some really interesting things happen. Um, at some point in here, the oceanographers do, I think go to a city council meeting, they show footage from that again.

Well, before this stuff happened, uh, and, uh, the mayor is just downplays it there. They raised some concerns. He says, no, no, it’s fine. And they just opened up a new desalinization plant down the way to make sure the water is safe. And even, uh, you know, later at the. When he’s giving us speech at the event, you know, that kind of big where all the star kind of starts beginning.

He even makes some reference to the water, being clean and do people say this is a problem. And, uh, this is the best damn water I’ve ever had in my life. And he takes a sip from it. So you get a little bit of that, you know, corporate green. Uh, the mayor’s kind of not, not knowingly, presumably in on, it’s not like they knew this was happening, but just neglect, you know, and ignorance and ignoring it because it’s politically expedient to do so.

And so it does follow the mayor around a little bit, as things go crazy with the town. He goes in a car with the policeman when they’re, um, answering a call out somewhere. And it’s, there’s this family, I guess, who, you know, has been crying for her. And one of the officers goes inside while we just see the footage from inside the police car and we hear the audio and it’s like, this family is basically just begging to be killed and the officer comes out and he’s been bitten by them.

And you can see him walking almost zombie. You know, towards the car and he’s got some problems with him, he’s face or whatever is messed up. And the other officer inside the car jumps out. And I don’t know, man, it just touches so many nerves because nowadays, and I don’t remember if this was true 10 years ago, probably wasn’t as true as it is now.

Nowadays we’re even watching disasters. Unfold through body cameras and police car cameras. And we see these terrible scenes of people getting police, getting shot and killed, or, you know, people getting killed by the police. And so it just taps a nerve every single time. And wouldn’t, you know, it right here in this fricking movie, you know, is the same damn thing.

It’s a dash cam footage of this cop stumbling out of this house and he’s not. And his partner pops out of the car and runs towards him and is like, Hey man, Hey man, like what’s going on? Like get in the car. Uh, you see Manuel. And the cop pulls his gun out and aims it at him. Yeah. 

Craig: I mean, you combined a couple of scenes there.

It’s, it’s actually not as partner that he shoots when, when the chief of police or something, but the, the, the two guys, the two cops who are buddies, you know, it says that one of them had been best man. And the other one’s wedding. They establish that. That’s another thing that I liked that they do about this movie is they establish the humanity of the characters.

We don’t get to know them well, but they seem like real people. And so when the one partner goes into the house and you hear, they enhance the audio so that you can hear what’s going on, I guess the audio from his body cam, I don’t know. But they enhance the audio and you hear these people like moaning and groaning and begging to be killed.

And then you hear gunshots and then his, and then the partner goes in and he’s like, what are you doing? And, and they see what’s happening. In fact, you can even like hear the scuttling of the ISO pods and stuff, and you hear one of them say, it’s on me, it’s on my leg. And, um, later the mayor and the chief of police.

Driving around, you know, just to see what’s going on. Cause things have gotten so crazy and they come across the cop car and presumably, presumably one of the police guys is already dead, but one of them comes stumbling out. And like you said, he’s clearly already a mess. He’s clearly infested with these things and he shoots the chief of police before turning his gun.

On himself. And the mayor takes the cop car and drives away and wrecks it. And there’s, we see a lot of this, you know, like a crawl or, or, um, words that tell us what’s happening. And they say the mayor died of his injuries. He likely would have survived, but there were no ambulances or medical services available.

The whole town is in chaos, which you know, is, um, kind of karma for him because like you said, it’s not like he set out to do this. It’s not like he understood the severity of the consequences. Um, but he was complicit in. Allowing this to happen. 

Todd: It’s so COVID man. God, 

Craig: I, yeah, it very much is. And, and you know, when it first starts the mayor ability to broadcast, she’s still recording, but, uh, she can’t live stream at her live broadcast or whatever.

So trying to keep it contained and the Mary even goes on the radio and he’s like, look, you know, Sometimes when it’s especially hot as it is right now, bacteria levels in the water fluctuate and sometimes they become high. And, um, he says, so if you’re somebody who’s particularly sensitive, then maybe you would consider limiting the amount of time you spend in the water or maybe stay away from the water for a little bit.

And you know, when something big and scary, like this happens, that’s exactly how it starts. Stay calm. It’s okay. Yeah, there’s something going on, but you’re probably going to be fine. I mean, until you’re not until it just blows up and then yes. Yeah, you’re right. It’s frightening in 20 20, 20, 21. Um, because we’ve witnessed it over the past couple of years.

Todd: Yeah. At least we didn’t have things eating us from the inside out. 

Craig: Well,

Todd: well, it could always be worse. I’m trying to find a positive spin on this, Greg. Come on. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that the positive thing about it is that, um, I am somebody who’s relatively environmentally conscious, like I’m aware of. These problems. And I try not to actively contribute, you know, my partner and I share one car and, and we recycle and, you know, we try to do those little everyday things that you can do.

Um, I’m sure that we could do more, but I’m conscious of it and, and, and wary of it. But I think that even for somebody like me and maybe for others, I don’t know, this is. A fair warning. You know, nature is fragile. And if we continue to do things that are actively harming our own environment, our own planet, our own home, eventually we are going to have.

Face the music. And I think that this does, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s exaggerated and then it happens over a couple of days. But, 

Todd: uh, I think that the movie does a really good job of maintaining interest just by giving us a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different narratives and a lot of different stories to follow.

It really does unfold like a very well done documentary and. You know, one of those narratives, again, it’s this very human story of this couple with their baby. Who’s coming back home to visit relatives and is completely unaware of what’s going on. Cause they’re on a boat. And uh, they get a little worried because they’re trying to sell phones and they’re not getting any signal.

They’re not getting through to their, to their relatives. But you know, they land, I think it’s about evening time. It’s nighttime when they land and things are just dead. They’re like, wait a second. Like this is the holiday. This place should be hopping and that’s terrifying and they step off and they’re with their kid.

And there are moments there when they’re there with their kid and you’re just like, oh my God, what’s going to happen to this baby. You know, they come across some dead bodies. He has been 

Craig: swimming the cell. Yeah. I mean, I think she either, you know, playfully pushed him into the water. He sell on the water.

I mean, you know, it’s, it’s playful and he’s not, you know, he swims around for a little bit or whatever. I also thought that the. Usually in a situation like this, especially they’re a young married couple, and they’ve got, like you said, a newborn that they’re carrying around in like a Punkin seat or whatever.

And first of all, you know, like you said, the town is, the town is dead, but yeah, when, when they start to see the dead bodies, my immediate thought was get out, like, why would you stay. They casually mention it like the husband. Cause I think she says that I think she says, let’s get back on the boat or something.

He’s like, what, what do you want to do? You know, we get back on the boat and launch with no gas. Okay. I buy that, you know, if it were, if it were me, maybe I would look for the shoreside gas station and just steal some gas. I don’t know. But. It kind of made sense. There’s still a little 

Todd: ignorant as to what’s going on though.

Right? Like they don’t know how far it goes, how much it reaches then it’s not really, until they wander into the town that they realize, like everything is dead right there, dead bodies in the streets. At that point, I would have been like, yeah, get the hell out. Like if they’re dead bodies, literally in the streets and they end up in.

In like an antique store, right. That happens to be open it’s shortly after they arrive at that antique store. And we are seeing footage. I think it’s through like the security cameras right at the antique store. And he’s suddenly going kind of nuts because these things are inside of him and they’re starting to crawl out and.

Grabs. It’s very horror movie, you know, where he’s freaking out, she’s freaking out and he grabs it like a poker from the fireplace and he’s asking her to end it. Am I right? Cause he basically saying, kill me, cut it out 

Craig: or something. He was saying, kill me. That was awful. It was, 

Todd: I mean, he wouldn’t even know what’s going on.

Right. I mean, he could just be violently sick. 

Craig: Well, but you can see, and I have to say the effects. This is a gory movie and the effects look really good. I mean, if I remember correctly, you can see something actively trying to burrow its way out of his neck. I think at one point 

Todd: yet it does borrow out of his neck and it’s coming straight out.

That’s the end of it. Right. That’s what. Does she ended up killing him? I 

Craig: honestly don’t remember. It’s been like two or three weeks. Yeah. 

Todd: She either. I, don’t not sure if she ends up killing him, but that was a really touching scene. Just because, again, as you said earlier, like life is fragile and one minute you’re on a boat with your newborn, you know, going to SU to visit your family and not hours later, suddenly one of you has something burrowing out of his skin and his.

I, I, that really, that really pulled at my heart strings. And that’s toward the end of the movie. I 

Craig: mean, that’s near the very end. 

Todd: Yeah. And the movie was engaging to me from up to the very end, really, uh, well, and the other, because of these things, because of those rides. And the humanity 

Craig: of it. Yeah. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Like you said, that is near the very end, but there are also other people that we follow. One of them is like a teenage girl. I would guess 15 maybe. And she is FaceTiming with a friend in another town, um, and, and basically documenting her own. She, she has it. She has the rash and it starts out very small and she’s concerned, but then she makes her way to the hospital and we just get maybe a minute or two of her FaceTiming with her friend, but we see the progress, you know, at first on her, it’s just a little bit of a rash.

It’s disgusting, but it’s just on one. Part of her body, but eventually she makes her way to the hospital. When she gets to the hospital, there are quite a few people there, but then later when we check in with her again, and her own symptoms had progressed. I mean, the hospital is just teaming with patients.

The, the staff is overwhelmed. Um, much of the staff has fled eventually. The doctor’s the only one who stays and the CDC tells him that he should leave. And he’s like, are you kidding me? He’s like, are you kidding me? I’ve got like 130 people here. Who are dying, I’m just supposed to leave. And they’re like, yeah, you really should.

The CDC is like, it’s a miracle that you haven’t been infected yet. And he’s like, no, I’m fine. And then, you know, there’s just one scene where, um, this young teenage couple, you know, just fooling around, like out, hanging out in the afternoon or whatever, but they’ve got with them, uh, camp. Or, I dunno, maybe even just their phones or whatever, and they’re, they’re videoing each other.

It’s flirty, it’s cute. She, uh, jumps in the water and, and, uh, he says something like, no, I’ll just let the jellyfish sting you. And she says, oh, and he thinks she’s kidding. But then she starts the waters kind of start to roll and, and she’s. Yeah. And she’s being attacked. And I think he falls in and it says that, uh, they found.

The camera weeks and weeks later, but their bodies were never recovered. And so it’s just, you know, these little mundane scenes of everyday people in their everyday lives dealing with this strange phenomenon. And it’s also somewhat realistic in that it doesn’t affect. Everybody, you know, some people, whether it be because they weren’t exposed to the water or they were just lucky, I don’t know, but it’s not affecting everybody.

It’s affecting a lot of people. At one point, we hear a voice message. Um, from the young married couple, her it’s her parents that they’re going to see, and we hear a voice message from her mother to her that she never got. And it said she, you know, her mom’s like something strange is happening. Your father, uh, has some sort of rash or something they’re afraid of.

To amputate his leg. Lots of people have it. I think I may have it too. And she says, you know, we just want you to know that we love you and whatever happens don’t get off the boat, but she never, but she never got the message. Just, just the realism of hearing. A voicemail and it sounds very heartfelt and, and true to life, I think makes it just it’s scarier.

You know, for me, for me, I love all types of horror movies. I love monster movies and scifi and all that kind of stuff, but some of the scariest movies are so scared of. Because you believe they really could happen. Um, and you believe that they really could happen to normal people like you, like your friends and family.

And to see it portrayed in that way is potentially more impactful on a scary level than seeing somebody get their head ripped off by Godzilla or what. Exactly so fun but 

Todd: different. Well it’s like you said too, especially now, like this is, this is really exploiting the fact that we are constantly now in this communication age, where we have so many different ways to communicate with each other, we have so many different ways that we’re leaving traces behind.

You know, we’re out constantly taking photos with our camera and videos and things with our camera. We’re Skyping with people where, you know, we chatting over here with people, you know, I’m video chatting with my parents a lot. I don’t usually record it, but, you know, I mean, he, you know, I think Levinson chose this format when he’s.

He was thinking about the Pompei disaster and basically thought, well, my God, like if that had happened today, there, you could just round up everyone’s cell phone footage and their Skype conversations and stuff and get a much clearer picture of what happened. And that’s where I think this movie kind of falls a little short is in the rap.

At the end of the whole deal, you know, basically the it’s, it’s just kind of, the government comes in, I think. And they apparently, and this is all more or less just told to us there’s no footage of it. Right. But it’s just the gov the government came and I think dumped chlorine over everything and managed to kill everything off and then paid off the rest of the town to keep it quiet, to avoid panic.

And I’m thinking, my God, come on. I mean, Yeah, these people are communicating with others. Wasn’t it? That young couple weren’t they actually on the phone with their brother when, or friend or somebody wasn’t even in the town who was there watching when this was going down. I mean, there’s no way in hell that this thing would, that there’d be, you couldn’t find everybody to be able to pay them off, even if they would take the money.

You know what I mean? And so. I found that see to be a little far-fetched. I don’t know, 

Craig: man. They say they claim the filmmakers claim that Homeland security covered it up. Um, and they, they, they quarantines the town, which we saw earlier. People in the town were trying to flee, but they had closed off the only bridge.

And so people couldn’t leave. They said they confiscated everybody’s cameras. Like you said, they, they killed off the ice of pods with incredibly high concentrations of chlorine. And I said 75 or 80% of Chesapeake bay is lifeless. I was wrong. My notes tell me it’s 40%, which according to the trivia that I read is accurate.

Now I don’t cite me on that. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but they, they, uh, the government attributed. What happened to unseasonably high water temperatures. And that just sounds, yep. That sounds like what would get reported and that I would believe it. And then, you know, it ends again, you know, showing us like it did in the beginning, all this presumably real footage.

Mass deaths of fish and, and all kinds of stuff like that, but also, you know, uh, right alongside footage of, again, water activities, like life just goes back to normal. You see, you know, the same things that we saw before of all of these people doing all kinds of things in around with Y. Now, I don’t know. I really am not a conspiracy theorist and it’s very difficult.

This for me, in my lifetime, the level of conspiracy theory that exists in our world is unprecedented for me. It’s there, there have always been conspiracy theories. Um, but they are so widespread at this point. And there’s so much buy-in to them, people that I know. Are buying into these conspiracy theories, people that I never would have expected educated people.

And I always have to kind of check myself and, and, and say, you know, I don’t believe these things, but who’s to say there’s not some truth to them, you know, ultimately I don’t know, but it’s just the, the, the idea that this could, I guess what I’m trying to say. Many people today, if they heard this story and were told this story as though it were true, or if they read about it on Facebook and were told that it was true, they would be, they would 100%.

Without 

Todd: question and you’d see a documentary like this. I think this might be the only horror movie that Barry Levinson has ever 

Craig: done. Yeah. I don’t know. The name is familiar. 

Todd: I mean, he, he, uh, the natural young Sherlock Holmes. Good morning. Vietnam rain, man. Avalon toys, sleepers. Toys, the dog 

Craig: toy toys is one of my favorite movies.

I think it’s my favorite Robin Williams movie. If you ha, it’s not a horror movie, it’s not a horror movie at all, but I still highly recommend it. It’s kind of unknown. It’s not one of his better known roles, but it’s so, and all 

Todd: the time. Oh, and young Sherlock Holmes, I saw that in the theater and I loved it.

And that movie has seen. Been lost to history. And, uh, and I still liked that more. I went back and watched and I was like, damn this, why don’t people remember this movie more? So, yeah. I mean, he has a crazy voila, but I think this was his only dip into horror. So that’s kind of interesting. 

Craig: It was good. I mean, I.

Yeah, I think it’s really effective. And I think it’s well done. Uh, I, I told you, I said it’s found footage, but not in the way that we usually talk about found footage. I told you it’s more like a documentary. So it’s a compilation of news footage and interviews, and some, you know, found. Of of people filming their own experiences or whatever, but I just feel like it it’s put together really well.

Uh it’s well edited. Um, it’s it’s no, it’s not boring. It’s it’s it’s short. It’s under an hour now. It’s never boring. The pace keeps up the tension builds. Um, scary. It is scary. And I jump 

Todd: scares. I mean, my God, it’s gory. It’s great. As a horror movie, it’s fantastic. Well, and I was 

Craig: worried about people, you know, I was worried about Donna.

I kept, you know, we only see her camera, man. And when we see him, it’s when he can stop to splash some water on his face. And then it says he died the following day. Um, I, you know, of course it’s a little bit of an emotional cheat, but throw that baby in there. I was worried about them. Yep. But the mom and the baby, presumably get away by the way.

Not before there’s another jump scare where they’re kind of not attacked, but I don’t know a better word for it. Kind of attacked by somebody who’s infected. And you see one of the ice of pods crawling towards the baby, but the mom, the mom, not even realizing what’s happening, the mom pulls the baby away just in the Nick of time.

And one of the last things you see is just her with holding. The, the baby’s carrier and walking down the desolate street out of town. Um, so the baby makes it presumably 

Todd: worry folks.

Craig: But yeah, I mean, it was just, it left me feel, it made me think, not specifically, I, I’m not terribly worried about these ice pods really, but, um, it did concern me about other, uh, environmental factors, um, that are very real and very scary and very dangerous. Um, and in that way, I think it’s really effective.

And I would, I have recommended this movie to, uh, friends. I think it’s really what. Yeah, I 

Todd: completely agree with you. I thought it was a very effective horror movie. It was, it was engaging from beginning to end, just really well done and a very good use of the found footage genre. Really quite nice.

Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with a friend, just Google us online, and two guys and a chainsaw podcast. We’ll bring up our Facebook page, our Twitter feed. And our website and leave us a comment there. We’d have a few more requests coming up, get your request in as well.

And, uh, we we’ll get to that. Until next time I am Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

It’s not exactly Shaun of the Dead, but it’s not without its charms. This zom-com fulfills a long-time request by ever-patient listener, Francis.

The dead are attacking, and old and young alike must take up arms to defend themselves in merry-old England.

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)

Episode 268, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: Well, we’ve been going through quite a few requests lately, and now it’s about time. It is about time for us to get to a request that has been sitting in our queue for ages bore Francis, uh, three or four times as very kindly tapped us on the shoulder and said, Hey.

What’d you guys mind doing? Cockneys vs Zombies. I’d sure love to hear your, your views on Cockneys versus Zombies. Hey, just to remind you co requested Cockneys versus Zombies quite nice. And so, uh, here we are finally getting around wheat. Look, don’t say that we don’t listen to your requests. Like I respond to all of you.

We’d does go on a list just because you don’t hear it and say five years doesn’t mean we might not get back to 

Craig: it. Yeah, I do feel bad. I know we, we, we really do. We put all the requests on a list. Um, but you know, we have our preferences too, so. We tend to pick the ones that we are most interested in and also the ones that are easiest to find.

There are a couple of ones that are on the request list that I’ve really wanted to do, but they’re really difficult to find they’re not streaming anywhere. Um, And neither of us are wealthy. So it’s not like where I’m willingly pouring out money. I mean that $4 could get me like a burger

Todd: we’re cheap ass bastards. This is fun. This is, this would be a good time to have a patriotic count where we could say, you know what? You could change all this. Yeah, 

Craig: stay tuned. Folks. It may not be lost 

Todd: log, 

Craig: but no. Yeah, we’re finally getting to it. Cockneys versus Zombies from 2012. 

Todd: I tell you, um, I think one of the things that may me, well, there were probably two things that made me kind of brushed us aside a little bit.

Maybe three, the first one is, is, sounded an awful lot, like Shaun of the dead. When I first like, oh, is this kind of like a cheap of the dead knockoff kind of thing? And the second thing, because I’d never heard of it before, which made me think even more like, oh, this is kind of a cheap shot of the dead knock off.

Um, and I think the reason I probably hadn’t heard of it because there are. Famous people in this movie, especially if you know, British actors. And I will say, I am not really brushed up on my British actors unless they’ve been in like famous movies or TV shows that are, you know, kind of world famous. Um, I’m not as familiar with these faces in these names, but I often see them on and I go, oh, that guy’s familiar.

Oh, that woman’s familiar. What was she in? So that was the, those two things that I hadn’t really heard of it before. And it was an awful lot like Shaun of the dead and also. This came out in 2012. So a little while ago, believe it or not like almost 10 years ago. And by now I feel a little kind of burned out.

Comedic zombie movies. I mean, Shaun of the dead came out and it was brilliant. It still is brilliant. It’s kind of cut above the rest, I think just in that, but then we’ve done Anna versus the apocalypse and we’ve done. I don’t know. I mean, it’s just, it seems like this is become kind of, um, its own sub genre, right.

There are horror comedies, but like they’re also like zombie comedies, like it’s its own thing, right? Yeah. 

Craig: But to be honest with you, I actually kind of prefer the zombie comedies to just this. Zombie movies. Um, the zombie, the, the straight zombie movies, you know, I know that there are a lot of fans of the walking dead and you know, all of Romero’s stuff and, and that’s fine.

I, I get it and I’ll watch some of them, but I honestly feel like most of the time it’s, it’s the same thing. Like, I mean, it’s the hobbies, you know, zombies chasing people around. That’s that’s fine. I actually really do appreciate the humor. Uh, I liked Anna and the apocalypse a lot. 

Todd: We really 

Craig: enjoyed that one.

And, uh, we watched cooties about, you know, the, the little kids on bees. That was hilarious. So I actually do like these zombie comedies and, and honestly, like I liked this movie. You can’t help, but draw. Comparisons to Shaun of the dead. And that really, I think is to this movie’s detriment because it’s not as good.

And it’s not as funny. It’s funny, but it’s not as funny. 

Todd: I would say it’s like Shaun of the dead is funny in very clever ways. You know, Shaun of the dead has like a very sort of sophisticated plot structure with, with things that are set up early on that have payouts later. I mean, it’s, it’s really. Just a good movie period.

It’s well plotted, but it’s just, I don’t know the level of humor, you know, even though it’s pretty darn silly, it feels a little more sophisticated. Whereas this movie look it’s funny, but it didn’t have me rolling on the floor. It didn’t have any slapping my head. There were no, like, it’s kind of typical humor.

And I think that was my big kind of issue with it’s like, oh, okay. Like really, really old people who are. Wield a gun and, and, and suddenly, you know, turn from sweet, old, frail people and a gun toting granny kind of characters. Oh, see, 

Craig: I thought that was hilarious. I think that was my favorite part. 

Todd: Honestly, probably was my favorite part, but it’s a trope, you know what I mean?

It’s. It’s a pretty typical trope. I don’t even just mean in horror movies, but I’m just meaning in any movies, this idea that an old person is crasser and more vibrant or whatever, then they first appear to be early on, you know, as supposed to get a laugh. And, and yeah, I don’t know. It just, I felt like the whole movie was kind of like this.

I kind of saw the jokes coming a mile away. I kind of wasn’t surprised at the humor. I, I. I don’t know, I just didn’t laugh out loud, too many moments during this movie, but I did chuckle, you know, I did enjoy myself. I’m overall. I enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed watching it. Um, but you know, I can’t say I was blown away by really any aspect.

Craig: I think. Yeah, but, but going back to the old people, I mean, it’s a zombie movie and you know, so it is zombies chasing people around a lot, but it’s kind of divided between two stories and there’s like not two stories, they’re interlocked, but there’s a young group of people, you know, probably in their twenties.

Are kind of the central characters, but then there’s also this older cast who lives in this like retirement community or care facility or whatever. And those older people, I just found so charming. I think I just really like it when actors. Of more advanced age art, art are given opportunities. Well, no, I mean, they’re old people, they’re out, they’re old.

These are old people. They’re playing people in a retirement community. They’re, they’re elderly people, but a lot of these actors are established actors from, from their day, you know, who they probably don’t have. The same kinds of opportunities, not that the bay or anybody else might think that Cockneys versus zombies is some kind of amazing opportunity.

Like finally, finally, the role of a lifetime, 

Todd: my second coming my career. 

Craig: But it’s fun. It’s fun to see these folks, you know, gets a play and they do get to play and it’s funny and they get to fight zombies. And, and like you said, uh, you know, I recognize some of these actors, uh, even some of the older ones I recognize.

They’re not anybody whose name I would know, um, or who I could specifically identify. I just, oh yeah, that guy. Um, but. The one of the ones that stood out to me in the old people group was this old lady named Peggy. Who’s like kind of the girlfriend of the main old guy. And she’s paid, played by honor Blackman.

And I, I, I just, in my mind, I was thinking, I bet you money that this woman. I had a career as a young woman. And so I saw, I looked her up and she was pussy galore,

easy, right? The best bond girls name in the whole history of James Bond, but Siegel or isn’t this movie and she’s a little old frail lady. Cake SAS. 

Todd: And you know, I mean, she still looks good too. I mean, 

Craig: she’s beautiful. 

Todd: When I saw her, I knew, I knew just like you did, I’m like this as a classic actress who was just like stunningly gorgeous in her day.

And, uh, and yeah, she was pussy galore. She was Hara and Jason and the Argonauts. She played in the Avengers TV series as Catherine, Gail. I mean, this woman has an insane right. And so doctor who a lot of these people were in doctor who apparently to which British actor hasn’t appeared in doctor who it’s one point or another, and she died last year 

Craig: by, oh, I didn’t know that.

Well, she was an old broad, she had a good life, I think. I would say, so the only, the only other actor that I specifically recognize was one of the younger actors who plays Andy, who is one of these, uh, two brothers there’s Terry and Andy, his name is Harry Treadaway eat away. Treadaway and I recognized him and I looked him up.

And what I recognized him from was a movie. Honeymoon, which I was almost positive that you and I had done on the podcast and I looked for it and couldn’t find it. And I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done it. Um, I don’t even know this one. Oh, it’s a good, good movie. It’s a, it’s a horror. Saifai thriller that focuses just basically on the, these two people, this young husband and wife or newly married and they’re on their honeymoon.

And, uh, she. Mysteriously kind of goes missing in the night and he finds her and she’s all dirty. And uh, then like she’s different, but why?

Todd: That sounds interesting. It’s 

Craig: really good. If you haven’t seen it out there, folks check it out. Honeymoon. I don’t remember when it came out last five years. It’s all. 

Todd: I think I recognize them. I don’t know if you ever saw the TV series pen. But, uh, I started watching that a while back and he’s a Victor Frankenstein in that and quite good actually in it.

Quite good, very intense, uh, dark take on Victor Frankenstein. It’s really impressive. Yeah. So yeah, I, I recognize him from that. He’s 

Craig: handsome. He is pretty blue eyes look good looking, man. They play. You know, very working class, lower working class folks. So he’s kind of rough looking in this movie, but good looking guy.

And that’s another thing that the characters are likable. The, the way that the movie opens up is is we get a, a picture of a poster outside of this new development and, and Hartman construction is. Building luxurious living in the heart of east London. And it shows, you know, like this. Condominium that they’re going to be building or whatever, but then it’s, you know, it just shows the construction site, which is in east London and it’s really ugly and dirty and, you know, looks awful.

It also made me very interested to learn about the history of the east end of London, because I don’t know that much about it. 

Todd: So I looked it up. It’s so funny. I would like we are, 

Craig: I haven’t Todd, as you listeners may know is a world traveler. Who’s lived all over the world, living in China now, but you’ve lived in England and God knows where else.

Um, Huge a world traveler, but I did spend a summer in London and I absolutely loved it. I think of all the cities I’ve ever traveled to London is my favorite. It’s just beautiful. And it’s an amazing amalgamation of. Modern, uh, architecture and technology, but also like you’ll just see these buildings, you know, everywhere, just that are hundreds of years old, just like this amazing historical architecture.

It’s, it’s, it’s amazing. And all of the different, you know, I stayed pretty central. I was studying theater and so we. Fairly central, but we were tasked with venturing out into some of the, uh, small. Parts of the city, because my instructor wanted us to see like just local theater, which is which thrives in London.

And so I went and saw a production of little shop of horrors in this tiny bar. Like it was just in the back room of this tiny bar. So, you know, you would go and get your pint in the bar and then you would go sit like on benches in this back room and watch. The show and it was so much fun, but anyway, so I looked up east London and historically it’s been kind of working class, lower class, poor area in recent decades.

There’s been a lot of development there. So things have changed, but you very much get that sense from this movie that this is a very working class place. And the fact that these big corporate developers are coming in. Is problematic for the people who live there. It’s, it’s displacing these people who have spent their entire lives there and wild development.

And you know, that, that in theory, that sounds great. You know, what does that mean for the people that have called this, their homes for so long? And that’s, that’s such like an underlying motif in the movie. Like it’s really not all that important, but I feel like it gives heart to the characters and gives them real motivation.

I believed them our main characters, um, Terry and Anna. Are these working class guys and their grandpa Ray lives in this retirement community. That’s going to be torn down to make way for all of this development. And that’s what motivates them basically through the, through the whole. 

Todd: I thought that was interesting.

I was getting real, like batteries not included vibes or maybe the 

Craig: that’s such a good movie too. Sometimes I wish that we didn’t, uh, limit ourselves strictly to horror because there are so many movies like that. Absolutely loved that we could never justify talking about best, seriously folks batteries not included.

Checking out, 

Todd: go see it now. I’m for sure. Oh, another wonderful movie of a lot of very old. Uh, actor’s a little past their prime, Jessica 

Craig: Tandy, one of my favorite actresses and her husband. He crowed, I can’t think of his name, uh, but just. Tons of great, great people. But anyway, in this movie we see the construction site, uh, worker uncovers like this medieval door, which is hilarious, like it’s perfect condition.

Like they just happened to dig it. 

Todd: I’m like a foot below the surface 

Craig: and it was, and there’s a sign on it that says sealed by order of king Charles, the second 16, 66. And one of these two guys were there and one of them was like, we should tell the foreman and the other guy’s like, dude, there might be like golden air into it.

Like break it down with sledge. And, uh, it’s they find what they find is a two. Yeah. Play pit more like our next step from a graveyard. Can we, I don’t care. And there are skeletons everywhere and they’re joking around, but then there’s a skeleton, like is up and walking around behind one of them and the other one’s like, dude, walk out, there’s a skeleton behind you.

And he’s like, Ooh.

And then it bites them in the throat. Kills, kills both 

Todd: guys. That’s that second kill where he bites the other guy, like basically like takes off part of his jar or something super gory. And I was like, oh, wow. So we’re really, I mean, that sets a tone. Right? How gory is your movie going to be? Yeah, and it was pretty, pretty brutally gory, so I thought, oh, okay, cool.

It’s going to be funny. And we’re going to get some serious gore. 

Craig: Yeah, it is pretty gory. I will start out with the gripe that there’s a lot of blood spray and it’s. 

Todd: That was so distracting. 

Craig: Yeah. It doesn’t look great. Like, I mean, it’s serviceable, but it looks like a video game. It doesn’t look, 

Todd: it calls attention to itself.

Really. It’s kind of that bad. I think I, I was really disappointed. I don’t. And why couldn’t they have gone with a little more practical for this? I mean, there wasn’t, it wasn’t like there were these intricately staged. I mean, I don’t know, maybe I’m trying to save on 

Craig: makeup or whatever. Well, I feel like I have no idea what their budget was, but I can’t imagine that it was that big.

And there are so many extras in this movie, like thousands of extras playing zombies, and I guess they just advertised for them on TV, around London. Come be a zombie in our movie and, and tons and tons of people showed up and people were sending in audition tapes, like presenting, pretending to be zombies.

And, uh, you can kind of tell, I mean, it’s, it’s not like, it’s not like you’re looking at seasoned. You know, like it, it looks like they just pulled people off the street and said, okay, be a zombie.

Todd: And really that’s the thing about zombie movies is that sometimes all your that’s really unique, all you really need,

Craig: and these are slow. They’re slow walkers, slow walking zombies, 

Todd: which they use to great effect later. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. But you know, after those guys get killed, the title sequence starts up and it’s animated and it’s really fun music. And I’m like, oh, okay, this is going to be good. Yes. 

Todd: I’m glad you brought that up.

The title sequence, just like got my heart pumping, the graphics popping up and the music was great. This title music was great, whatever song that was. And the end credit song was like, just this great rock. I don’t know. 

Craig: It was just 

Todd: amazing. But then we go through what I consider to be a kind of applauding introduction.

It kind of took its time to introduce us to the characters. Like you said, these two guys who are clearly planning something, um, and that which we later find out is this bank robbery, uh, to help support his grandfather. Who’s in the, the, the retirement home. That’s. To be torn down. And so, like you said, it bounces between them sort of assembling the team.

They have a, their cousin, I guess, uh, is a woman. Her name is Katie. She’s played by a woman named Michelle Ryan. I didn’t really look her up, but she’s been in much of anything. 

Craig: I dunno, but she’s cute. And she’s a bad-ass she’s like she can pick locks and hot wire cars.

Todd: And then they pick up this other guy named Davey Toppins who they just call tuppins, which is cute. British thing. I don’t know why British, like sometimes it just all sounds so cute

tuppence and I’m going to take my dog out for walkies, you know? Aw. Um, but yeah, so, uh, he’s kind of, um, what is his specialty? I can’t. I don’t either. 

Craig: I don’t remember what his specialty is because the only thing that they show about him is that like he robs places, but he always gets caught. Like, why do you want that guy?

Todd: Exactly. But he’s just different. Then they pick up this absolutely bat shit, insane guy named mental Mickey. And he is crazy. But also he’s the guy you want on your team. If a you’re going to be robbing them. Or be you’re going to be up against zombies. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, he clearly is crazy. Like. There’s no reigning him in, but he’s also the weapons guy.

Like even though they don’t, they don’t want to hurt anybody. In fact, they don’t even want to fire the guns at all. They just feel like they need them for intimidation purposes, which you know okay. That makes sense. But when you got a guy like mental Mickey with you, like things probably aren’t going to go as planned.

And his gimmick is that he has this huge scar on his head and he, and he apparently has a, a steel or metal plate. And so he just uses his head to bash things all the time. Uh it’s it’s kind of hilarious.

Todd: It is, but these two kids also like their main job apparently is delivering meals on wheels to old people. And so they both show up at the old parents at the old folks home. And that’s when we get introduced to this cast of old British actors and actresses, they all have their little quirks. So there’s their brand.

And, uh, his name is Ray and he’s played by Alan Ford, who is a classic, a British actor. And apparently this role was written for him. 

Craig: And he’s great in it. He’s like the hard ass old grandpa, but I totally believe. Like, oh yeah. I I’ve known old guys like this. Like their bad-ass is from back in the day and they’re not going to let the fact that they’re old now stop them from being grumpy, short tempered old bad-ass is 

Todd: I know you’re 

Craig: going to be knocking this place down in a few weeks time, but do you feel the need to rub it in as people hear about.

You yuppie twins. I really need to get these measurements. Okay. If you don’t sling Europe in five seconds time, I’m going to remnant and clipboards so far up your Iris, you’re going to have to shove your pen up your nose to write on it for free. He does a great job. He’s really strong. They also. Oh, a woman named Doreen.

Who’s like this super horny old, like 

Todd: you was hilarious. 

Craig: And she like, she’s feeling up and all like all, like she’s like pressing her body against, oh 

Todd: God, you like to come and fix my window latch. I just don’t know what to do about it.

Craig: Oh, it’s so funny. And through throughout the movie, like she’s worried about him and like when they eventually come back together, as she runs into his arms, like it’s super cute. And he just kind of humorous, or I actually kind of got this, like just a little bit of a hint that maybe, maybe. Humored her in the past, had a little 

Todd: taste

Craig: and then there’s Peggy. I don’t know her real name, but pussy galore works for me. And she’s a super sweet old lady who is sweet on Ray. Um, but that’s also great too, because when they start getting in big trouble and when the zombies are all around this sweet little old lady, she can totally. Hold her own too.

Like somebody hands her a gun and she’s like, and she’s inserting the clip and like cocking it. Like she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s taken out 

Todd: sound BS. Oh 

Craig: God, it’s fantastic. And there’s more of them. Those are the most important one. There’s. Darryl. He’s like a crotchety old ex gangster type.

There’s Eric. Who’s a funny old guy in a wheelchair. There’s Hamus who’s this like likable old horn dog who spends his time, like ogling women through binoculars from his balcony. Who’s 

Todd: also hard of hearing and moves. Very, very slowly. Yeah. And I guess this was his last screen role, Richard, uh, Richard briers.

So 

Craig: yeah, he passed away either soon after, or maybe right before the movie came out. But cute. Cute. Cute. All of these old folks are super cute. I love them. I would totally go hang out with them and dance with them. Like

it’s adorable. Like before the zombies even come. Or just hanging out and like their common room and people are playing music and they’re singing together and dancing 

Todd: together. It is, it is cute. Right? I mean, it’s really, it’s sweet. If 

Craig: I ever end up in an old folks home, I hope it’s like this one. They all seem like they really like each other and they’re having a good time.

Like, 

Todd: yeah, it’s awesome. I think it makes it all the more important that Terry and Andy protect and preserve this by robbing a bank. That’s right, right. Yeah, no, you’re right. And I think, like you said, I think that’s the best part of the movie. It’s just the dynamic of the old people. I think it was. The younger guys, you know, when they finally have to come up against the zombies where I felt like, yeah, I’ve kind of seen all this before, but anyway.

Yeah. So they do that. They, uh, they, they all meet up. And then these guys, uh, Andy and, uh, Terry are assembling their crew of these guys and they’re in a van and then they go to the bank to Rob it. And the thing is they, they happen to dress as construction workers as they are. Cover, I guess we’re coming to the bank, even though all of them just came out of the back of a unmarked van, just outside the bank where they quickly huddle up and discuss their plan out in the open street.

I thought that was kind of funny, Danny. They, they walk in and, uh, the other thing that’s going on apparently is that the foreman or the owner of the construction company, or whatever has got some shady business or something going on where he’s either got to pay somebody. Or he’s got to return some money that he owed.

I don’t remember exactly what the deal was and. Eh, his person, or is it his wife or just his, I don’t know who works at the bank is expecting someone from the construction company to come and collect like 2 million pounds of a payoff or something. And these guys show up and before they could even get to the business of robbing the bank, she pops out and it’s like, oh, are you guys here for the money?

And they’re like, uh, well, yeah. And she’s like, all right, come on in, you know, Sits them down and starts to talk with them and then realizes in the office that, oh God, they, uh, they aren’t who I thought they were. And they realize, you know, they locked the door and mental Mickey gets his gun out and starts threatening her.

She’s pressed a little button under her thing to call the cops, but not before she ends up taking them down to the vault where they see all this big pile of money and they’re like, oh, well, So cool. We’ll just take this. 

Craig: And in the meantime, we have seen that the zombies are spreading. Like the construction site was the epicenter, but now they are moving out and they’ve already reached the old folks home.

One of the old folks has already spotted them. I think it’s, Hamus spotted them through his binoculars. And so they all. There they’re out there. And so this, this bank robbery goes wrong. Of course they hadn’t wanted to use their weapons at all, and they weren’t planning on it. But when they go to exit. The bank they’re surrounded by police.

Um, and pretty much, pretty much everybody is like, what are we going to do? You know, I guess we just have to surrender or whatever. And, but mental Mickey’s like, I’m not going down. And he goes out and just starts, like, he’s got a machine gun, like. And just start shooting at, at the police and they go, and then he comes back in and all the other folks, like, what are you doing?

We were going to use guns now we’re in even bigger trouble or whatever. And he’s like, I don’t care. Cause I’m mental Mickey and nobody’s going to take me down. And so they, so mental Mickey grabs a couple hostages, a man and a woman, um, Emma and Clive. Um, and, and they’re going to go out and they were coming out and we’ve got hostages, but when they go out, everybody outside is dead.

Todd: That was, to me, that was the funniest part of the whole movie. I laughed out loud at that point. Not only are they dead, but there’s like legs over here. It’s like a completely different scene that happened like within the last. Three minutes. They were inside. It’s 

Craig: entirely implausible because as we find out, as we find out very soon, these zombies are very slow moving.

Like as long as you’ve got it, it’s not like this is new. We’ve seen this in other movies too. As long as you don’t get. Cornered, you can just kind of fast walk around them.

It’s not really that big a deal, but somehow in three minutes they have decimated this whole 

Todd: that’s the gag. It is so funny. In the meantime at the old folks home, the old, uh, the old folks are having they’re singing and dancing, you know, fun time. And. Some zombies start to shamble towards there and then burst in through the back door as well.

And they’re able to offend themselves off pretty well. Actually. I think one of the nurses, the, the bigger nurse gets bit Ray grabs one of those, um, it’s like an implement. They were using to trim the hedges or something and takes a dude’s head. That was a very distractingly bad, special effect, but yeah.

Anyway, so then they, they end up kind of hold in there. So, so this is where, like the two stories are starting to kind of move forward, 

Craig: right. Because Terry and Andy are worried about, well, and they’re Katie, their cousin too. They’re they’re all worried about, um, their granddad. Another thing that I like about this movie is that everybody recognizes and acknowledges.

That it’s zombies right away. They don’t try to explain, explain it away in any other way. They’re not confused. Like the old people are like it’s zombies.

Todd: I love it. When she says. Well, when they come out and they, and she says, I think it’s, this is not the old people, but this is the young people. This is when the, uh, when they’re standing outside, just looking at the decimated thing and they see people shambling towards them. And I think it might be mental Mickey or somebody says, you know, who wouldn’t, what, what in the heck is this?

And Katie says, I think it’s zombies. And they’re like, no way a guy like shambles towards them as guts fallout. That man is eating an arm, like, okay, fair enough. And they hop in their van and take off. Yeah. 

Craig: Uh, yeah. And they do, they all, they all hop in the van. They, they make the mistake of bringing an injured person.

With my guess out of compassion, that that person immediately turns into a zombie and they have to Mickey us to shoot her out the back. The young folks end up, I don’t know what it is. It’s like a factory or a warehouse or something that they end up in. And there’s a, a chain like. Um, fence that they’re able to close behind them and lock.

So there, there are some zombies in there and for the most part, they dispatch them right away. But they’re able to keep this big hoard of zombies that are following them out. And they’re in there for a while, Mickey right away. Gets bit like he takes out one zombie, but then I feel like another zombie, like, and it’s so stupid.

Like he shoots it in both arms and then both legs. And before he can shoot it in the head with his huge gun, that he has a name for it, bites him on the arm and then he shoots it in the head and blows his head completely off except the job. Remains connected to his arm and just stays there for the next five or 10 minutes, which I thought was pretty 

Todd: hilarious.

That was a gag I had never seen before in a XOM calm for sure. This just a zombie still latched onto his arm. And he’s like, well,

Craig: don’t worry about it. It’s fine.

And I probably not as bad as.

Todd: Finally you prize it off, but of course that’s an issue cause everybody knows about zombies, biting people, blah, blah, blah. So again, in this world, there’s no question, like everybody knows the rules. And so that was kind of cool, but he brushes it off. Like it’s not going to be a big deal. In the meantime, the old folks are kind of trying to take stock of who all is there.

And uh, they’re like, oh, we’re missing. It was it, it was a Hom Hamish, right? Hamish where’s Hamish. Oh, well we saw him, he was out in the garden, so they go in there, the kitchen or something, they opened the window and they see him napping on a chair, out in the garden and surrounded by zombies. I 

Craig: thought that was hilarious.

Because the zombies aren’t paying any attention to him because you know, he’s just laying there. He could be dead for all day now. Oh, it’s so funny. And they yell out the window. Oh God, that might be one of my favorite parts too. They’re like, Hey miss. Hey, miss. And he finally wakes up and he’s like, wow, these are all around this.

Starting to come after him. Yeah. They’re starting to move towards him. And, um, whoever’s I think it’s Ray yelling at him. Hey, mish there’s zombies. They’re right behind you. Nope. Doesn’t work. Can’t hear yet. Hold on, hold on, 

Todd: hold on, hold on. 

Craig: And he slowly gets up and he’s got his Walker. He’s like, oh, hold on.

I’ve got met. And they’re still yelling at. Uh, K area, 

Todd: but bless his heart. My grandfather was like this. He was like this crotchety guy who, you know, had hearing aids and they didn’t make any bit of difference. And, you know, you would just have these charming, but frustrating moments with him where he just can’t hear what the hell you’re trying to say.

Finally, he goes zombies and he turns, I look around and it kind of turns around. I was like, oh, So he starts moving on his Walker 

Craig: and biggest move any faster, but he already was. He 

Todd: can’t, he can’t move any faster. And thankfully the zombies can’t move any faster than him on his Walker either. So suddenly the music kicks into high gear and it’s like, like, it’s this crazy chase scene.

We get these close ups on him and close ups on the zombies. And then, you know, that shot from far away where it just like he’s still on his Walker. 

Craig: Yes. Just slowly. Oh, it’s fun because Ray’s like, I’m going to go get him. And he takes the wheelchair from the guy who’s in a wheelchair to get him. And, uh, they opened the door.

There is zombies all out there, but they’re just like beating on them like Peggy and, and the other Doreen are just like whacking at these zombies to let Ray get out. And he runs out there with the wheelchair and he gets Hamish in the wheelchair and then Hamish is holding his Walker out in front of him.

And they’re just like plowing through zombie. 

Todd: It’s so silly, 

Craig: but so funny. It is, it got honestly, okay. Uh, full disclosure. Um, Todd and I. Uh, make our schedules work last week. So I watched this movie like two weeks ago. So as I’m talking about it now, I’m just remembering it. And honestly, I think that my memories of it and talking about it are funnier than it actually was.

Todd: I didn’t think 

Craig: about it and talking about it. Oh, well it’s funny. It conceptually, that’s hilarious. 

Todd: Right in execution. It’s still 

Craig: pretty funny. It’s still pretty. These old people are, these old people are very committed to their roles and it’s, it’s very tongue in cheek and it’s very cute. Oh, Meanwhile, the city is burning.

Emma and Clive are still prisoners. Um, Emma begs to leave. Apparently she has a, a sick sister that, uh, is incapacitated that she feels like she needs to check on, but Mickey takes the van keys away. Car keys or whatever away from one of the guys. And he’s obviously looking sick. Like they know he’s going to turn, but he also has big guns.

So they can’t really do anything. He gets attacked again. And there’s a moment where he breaks the zombies neck, but that still doesn’t kill it. So he just keeps turning it and he turns the zombies head around 360 degrees and then rips it off. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Um, 

so 

Todd: bad-ass, so then he ends up.

With those guys tied up, he ties up the prisoners and he sits down on a chair and it looks like he’s about to be gone. And then finally he does, he turns and he starts to go after them and the others rush in. And then there was this hilarious moment, which, you know, is a setup we should have seen coming, but it did surprise me where finally they’ve got his gun and they start shooting him in the head.

But because he has a metal plate on his head, it’s not working the bullets bounce right 

Craig: off. That was so funny too. Like that’s, that’s all. You find yourself as an audience member, always shouting at people, the head, the head, shoot him in the head and in this moment they totally do, but it doesn’t work as he’s got a steel 

Todd: Chrome.

Craig: Okay. But, oh, so they take a, a grenade because Mickey L’s red grenades, they take your grenade and I, what do they, I don’t remember what they do with it. Do they stick in his mouth 

Todd: or 

Craig: stick in his mouth or something? He blows 

Todd: up or what explodes through all this ordeal. One of the prisoners gets free the guy and he gets the gun and I think he ends up accidentally.

Shooting tuppence. Right? So tuppence is yeah. 

Craig: Any dyes, which is sad, but you expect there to be casualties. He wasn’t really a big character anyway. No, he really wasn’t. So then we, the people that are left are Andy and Terry, the brothers, Katie, their cousin, and Emma, the hostage. And they’re going to head for the old folks home, but.

They’re super nice. So they say that they’re gonna drop Emma at her sister’s place the zombies break into the compound. As they try to leave fighting shooting, blah, blah, blah. They get them all off. Meanwhile, back at the old folks’ home, the old folks, uh, are, are planning because they’re, they’re just.

Locked up in like the kitchen and there are zombies all around. Like there are windows all around, uh, their doors and they can with windows and they can see the zombies all around. And they’re like, what are we going to do? There’s nothing we can do. And they’re like somebody, maybe Ray, maybe somebody else says, well, we can fight.

And they’re like, well with what? And so they just start like grabbing. Kitchen implements and stuff. All right. Well, that’s about it. What have we got? They were facing go down fight. What do you think that somebody might come up? Somebody rescuers, nobody cares. We’re on our own we’re old age pensioners. We got to take care of ourselves.

Oops. These old folks are ready to go down, fighting. Cute, but they go check on Emma sister. We never see him. His sister, Emma goes into her apartment and we just hear noise and she’s been turned into a zombie. So she sticks with. And they don’t know what they’re going to do because there are so many, they want to go help the old people, but they’re like, surely the zombies are around there too.

What are we going to do? So they go, they’re like, we don’t have any weapons. And somebody says, wait a second. Doesn’t Mickey have weapons. And they have his keys. So they go to like, he lives in a storage container or 

Todd: something like that. Yeah. 

Craig: And so they go there and they open it up and it is an arsenal, like you’ve never seen.

And I also loved that scene too. Like they just have these big duffel bags in there. Stuffing them full of like machine guns and hand guns and swords. And yes, they have so much artillery. Uh, 

Todd: but then they’re like, how are we going to get there? Yada, yada. And uh, they say something to Katie about, you know, can you hotline, you can hot wire a car.

Right. And she’s like, yeah, sure. And the next thing you see is they are driving and driving down the street in a big double Decker red. Classic 

Craig: classic 

Todd: classic that made me chuckle. I thought, yeah. Okay. We’re going, we’re going very strong in the London branding here, right? 

Craig: Yeah. Cool. And I can’t believe I spent that whole summer in London and I never once rode one of those buses and I actually kind of regret it.

Todd: I think. 

Craig: Oh, my God. Yeah, they’re still there. It’s so funny to watch them. I mean, it is like, it’s, it’s a nice one. Like it’s nice and shiny and new. Um, but being a bus, it’s also kind of open in the back where people can board and whatnot. And so they’re kind of having to shoot zombies out of the boarding area.

Is it, 

Todd: is it Katie who shoots a zombie out of the back and, or is it the other girl? I don’t remember, but anyway, it kind of surprises everybody that she was able to blow them away. Then she turns around. No ticket. And I’m like, come on. I was like, uh, and this is what I meant earlier. I felt like there were a few more than a few moments like this in the movie where it’s like, okay, I realize that it’s supposed to be funny, but kind of a Groaner.

Craig: Yeah, I get it. I mean, it’s a cheap, easy joke, but it, it, it made me smile is silly.

So they do, they get to the old folks home, but the zombies are surrounding it. So Emma is like, well, I’ll cause a diversion. You guys get the old folks. So she like. Like calls to the zombies and like draws them to the bus and then she gets in the bus and drives away and they’re able to get in to the old folks’ home through a skylight or something like that, which is, yeah, it’s kind of a funny scene because they open it up and re.

Folks are right there. Like they think the zombies are coming in, so they’re right there, like ready to kill them. And they’re like, ah, and it’s kind of a. Reunion, but they, they, they get in and they are up all the old folks, which is such a great scene. They give Peggy a gun. She totally knows how to use it.

Um, whoever it is that has the Walker, like they duct tape.

Todd: That is funny. 

Craig: Do the same thing to the wheelchair. Oh my God. And so they, they, they blow up the zombies in the lobby cause they’re going to go out the front and they come out with their guns and the swords blazing. Um, one of the old guys, Derek. Uh, it gets attacked by his army and it starts biting him on the leg and he’s like, ha ha Rog leg.

And it turns out it’s a prosthetic leg that he then takes off and beats this. 

Todd: Yes,

you’re right though. When we’re talking, when we’re talking about it, it seems, it feels a lot funnier than it felt when I was wow. I 

Craig: know I’m telling the why they get out. Ima comes back with a bus. Um, they all get on the bus in nature. I have a way. And then there’s a really cute scene where the grandpa Ray.

Somehow it comes out that they had robbed a bank. You wrote the bank after all. I tried to change it up, back working for a living after we’re happy about my dad called rush us house

two and a half million.

That was really stupid, good off million. It was irresponsible and wrong. She definitely got the McGuire jeans and, you know, angry. You wish present the mic. Show me in this love what type of terrible you risk your lives. Become a savers. I’m impressed. But if you ever do it again or shoot shit on an affair, he called me right.

Todd: So you think that scene is cute? I thought it was silly. I thought it was really, really silly. Uh, I, that didn’t ring for me, even in the car. 

Craig: It totally did for me. Cause I could see, I CA I, I don’t know. I could, I could see getting the. Talk from my dad. Like, God, you really shouldn’t Rob banks, but thanks. I love you.

By the way. I have no idea when this episode will air, but as we’re recording right now, it’s my dad’s birthday. Happy birthday, dad. 

Todd: Love. Have you, when did you get them? I hope it was 2 

Craig: million pounds and nothing right after this. I’m going over to have lunch with them that my mom is cooking and I’m not bringing anything to her.

So I guess, so I guess I’m giving him the luxury of my present, present. 

Todd: So this is what it’s come to. Huh? 

Craig: They’re there. They’re not wealthy people, but. It’s financially stable. They are okay, 

Todd: who’s your money there? They 

Craig: don’t need my money. They just need my live. Um, but it seems like this is going to be a happy ending.

Like they’re going to drive off into the sunset and the bus, but then the bus dies, but they’re near the river. The teams, I assume. And, um, so there they’re like maybe we should find a boat and so looking for a boat, um, and there are still zombies everywhere, but they do find a boat and they, everybody jumps in and Peggy takes like, We’ll and find the keys and starts to 

Todd: take off.

She finds the key up above, under like the liken 

Craig: advisor 

Todd: advisor. So silly. 

Craig: It’s pretty funny. And they start to take off, but as it turns out, they have failed to, uh, Untie, one of the chains that was Moring the boat, Ray leaps to the chore, the shore, and unchanged it. And he’s like, if you watch something and died, you got to do it yourself.

We’ve got some it down. Do it. Your self used to look off the. And Peggy and get a good job or I come back on. So then the zombies attack, Ray, and they’re like, you know, just dozens of them. Completely piled on him and his grandkids are going to try to rescue him, but it looks like there’s just no fricking way.

Todd: This is going to be our emotional moment of the movie. You know, we’re like he goes down and sacrificing himself for his kids and, you know, our grandsons, I mean, It’s starting to feel poignant, although I will, I will say like, I mean, this wasn’t the kind of movie, I think that was going to draw my heartstrings that deeply.

Um, it just seemed like that would be the arc 

Craig: totally. 

Todd: At this. Suddenly you see zombies start to go down. W w w was it Andy jumps back onto shore as well? To go save him or no, I 

Craig: think all three of them do all three. I don’t remember who it is. All I remember is that I feel like the kids kind of realize there’s nothing we can do at which point Ray starts shooting his way out of the Lord.

And he does like, he shoots his way out of the hoard and he stands up all triumphantly and then there’s like a very, uh, gratuitous, but at the same time, like, You’re rooting for them like family gunfight, and they’re all like tossing weapons to each other and helping each other out. Um, and it’s fun again, the, the CGI blood splatter is distracting, but other than that, it’s fun.

It’s a satisfying moment. And then the very last moment they see the, the corporate construction guy who. In charge of demolishing the, uh, old folks home and they all sh he’s a zombie and they all shoot him. And then they all get back on the boat and Ray and Peggy kiss, the horny old jury latches on to AMD.

And then Ray gives this whole speech about how, you know, we’re EastEnders. We’ve been here forever. We’ll bounce back and they’re shooting people on shore from the boat, and then that’s the end. And then there’s a good credit sequence to, again, with more fun music, you know, overall, this isn’t a movie that I would cite as one of my favorites.

It’s not something that I would ever return to. Um, but I am not. Upset at having seen it. It had its good parts. It did, it had its good parts and it was, it was funny and entertaining. I wasn’t bored. Um, it’s, it’s just shy of an hour and a half, which is great. There were charming things about it that I really liked about it.

Um, so Francis, I apologize if I am not as enthusiastic about this, as you may have hoped that I would be, but that. That’s not to say that I don’t understand why you and others like it, it is cute. And it is charming. It’s very British that may have something to do with it. Like maybe if I were British, I would appreciate it a little bit for you.

Maybe, you know, if somebody, if somebody said, Hey, have you ever watched this? Um, I’d say, yeah. And they should I watch it? Sure. I mean, like it’s not a, it’s not a bad movie. It’s, it’s cute. It’s cute. I like, kind of like, yeah, it’s light. I’m not going to go, you know, Shouting out in the streets that people need to see it, but I appreciated it for what it was.

It was a good time. It was a nice hour and a half distraction. Um, and I I’m, I’m glad we will, as always, as I always say, this is a movie that I would not have watched, had it not been. For a request from one of our, of our listeners. And I appreciate that. I’m glad to have seen it. Um, I had a really, really, 

Todd: yes, more stuff, even more than watching them through.

Craig: So thank you, Francis. Um, and, and all of you out there. Keep the requests coming. And if you requested something a long time ago, be like Francis and keep, 

Todd: keep a few years. If you just keep.

Craig: Gently and Francis has been so nice every time. Just nice as can be. Oh, by the way. I’d still like to hear 

Todd: so, 

Craig: so, so thank you Francis and thank you to all of you out there who listened to us and support us and, and message us and, um, send us requests. Uh, it makes us feel good. We really like it and we try to do what 

Todd: we can for ya.

How do you know Francis. The movie, Craig, maybe he’s going to agree. Absolutely. What was the, we did one request once and the person was like, yeah, I hated it too. I don’t know why you think I liked it. I didn’t say I liked curtains. I haven’t thought I couldn’t wait to hear you guys rip it apart. Uh, I echo everything you say, man.

And, and, and I, like, I S like you said, it was just, it was okay. It was fine. It was cute. It was, it wasn’t particularly clever, but it had its moments. It was nice to see these older actors and spend some time with them and see the cute interactions. It did have a few moments that had me chuckling. Like you said you just can’t help, but compare it to Shaun of the dead or something like that.

And it just, it didn’t reach that level of clever and unique. So, uh, yeah, I, I probably, I would rewatch Shaun of the dead in a heartbeat. And this movie I, I’m probably not going to turn on again. All right. Well, thank you so much, everyone for listening. If you have a request as Craig’s. Just a Google as two guys in a chainsaw podcasts.

And then you’ll find our Facebook page, our Twitter feed and, or our website. And you can leave us a comment or send us a message in any one of those places. We will respond to you and we will add your request to the list and we will get to it sooner. Also, if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend.

We’d love to extend our listenership. We’re here. We’re on YouTube as well. In case you like to fire up videos and then just listen. I don’t know. I don’t know who chooses to listen to a sudden YouTube. Maybe it’s just, 

Craig: I listen to audio books on YouTube. So who 

Todd: knows? Oh, well that’s why we’re there. Uh, until next time I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Another high-camp schlockfest from Charles Band productions, though even campier than normal. One would even think it’s supposed to be a kid’s movie except for the pervasive sexual humor. What a romp. TerrorVision: You just have to see it to believe it.

TerrorVision (1986)

Episode 267, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd:This week, we’re going full on camp. This film, uh, I chose it’s called TerrorVision. It’s from 1986. This is one that was on the video store shelves. Quite a bit, has a very iconic, I think, iconic looking cover. Did you ever see that cover? Do you, did you remember it? 

Craig: I don’t think so. Really. 

Todd: Oh, okay. I read in the trivia that the cover was designed for, the poster was designed before the movie was even written.

Yeah. So. Clearly it, it inspired the movie dolls was like that to another Charles band production, right? That we, this is a Charles band production. So this is what we get his output is a bit uneven tends to be campy, very low budget, but still a lot of the money that they spend on it really goes up on screen.

There’s a lot of special effects in this film. I don’t know. I, uh, my, my history with this is that my dad had rented it for me once when I was a kid. I’m not really sure why I was pretty young when I watched it. I do remember that it’s rated R but it’s a horror comedy. And maybe the only thing I can think of is that it’s also a bit Saifai.

And so my dad, I think at the time, figured this would be the kind of movie we could watch together. Cause he would also enjoy it. And I know. Okay. For first of all, I hadn’t seen it since then. I mean, I haven’t seen it since I was probably. Okay. And then now that I’ve seen, I read it, I, I realized that most of the jokes in this movie and it is crammed full of jokes, really lame jokes went right over my head.

Now that I watch as an adult, I’m like, I can’t believe my, my dad had me watch this.

I mean, full of sexual innuendo, dumb sexual innuendo imagery, and stuff. It’s got some pretty gross moments, but I guess you could say it’s not gory because all the gross Ines, it seems like they did a pretty God. I am floundering here to introduce this movie because it is just a silly. Can’t be done.

Movie. Yeah. 

Craig: It’s one of the dumbest movies you’ve ever made me watch. 

Todd: I mean, what’s funny is I remember it as a kid, again, I’m just flashing back to these little things that I remember as a kid. And I just remember it being really off the wall kind of nutso. And so I thought, oh, this will be kind of fun and unique for us to watch.

And then when we sit down and we watch it, it’s like, Ugh, this is dumb. But the problem is it’s, it’s intentionally dumb. They’re really trying hard to be strict. And it’s working. So it’s going to be hard to talk about, I think maybe not, but I mean, you know, how can we look at a movie like this critically?

What can we say about it? It’s not saying anything. It’s not trying hard to even be anything 

Craig: but stupid. Right. Which is why, like I can, I always think it’s really sweet when you talk about your dad running things for you guys to watch together, because I know that he’s not a big horror fan, but he knew he knew that you were.

And so he would, you know,

Yeah. And told you, and that’s really nice. And I’ve, I’ve only had the opportunity to talk to your dad a couple of times, but he just seems like a really nice guy. I understand why seeing it at eight, aside from all the sexual innuendo innuendo of which there is all a lot, it, it seems like a kid’s movie.

Like, it seems, it seems like, uh, Invaders from Mars or I don’t know something along those lines. I mean, one of the central protagonists is a kid, a young kid, and it’s goofy looking monsters, killing people and goofy ways. Like you said, it’s not particularly violent. I mean, there’s a little bit of gore, but it’s not realistic gore.

It’s it’s like, no, right. Green Google all the time. Yeah. It’s just goo like you don’t really see any violence. You just kind of see aftermath of what happens when this monster attacks people. And it basically just, you know, turns them into. Puddles of sludge and, and it’s slimy and gooey, but it’s not scary.

And I can see a little kid liking the movie, but, but then it is just weird. There’s also all of the there’s, so it’s so much sex comedy and just like goofy sex comedy and not, not in any way, titillating or sexy, just like ridiculous. 

Todd: I mean, In the minds of the people making this. I mean, what were they going for?

This is my question, because on the one hand, when I started it up and I was watching it and I thought, well, this kind of has its pedigree in the types of movies that my dad had me watch. A lot of those black and white, 1950 style scifi films, which were often really silly, like. They were campy. They were certain kind of camp they were trying, but you know, they were just be movies.

And those are even referenced in this film, Tara vision. It’s kind of about this alien that gets beamed into this family’s house via the television. And you would think that, oh, they’re making some social commentary about television and all that. I mean, this is the mid eighties, right? So it’s all. Kind of a prime television time anyway, MTV was coming out and they even Dave, and talk about that.

And, and, and so it seems ripe for some kind of social commentary on television, but it there’s none. No, there isn’t really any, then. It’s so scifi III and I mean, it starts out in the planet Pluton or something, and there’s a, there’s a fake looking, a really fake looking model of the planet and this sort of goofy thing, which is it’s the mutant sanitation, the mutant disposal unit something.

Yeah. And it’s this guy that looks like a cling on his beams, this alien. This big, ugly, gooey looking monster. And it bounces off of the planets. It’s like beams it out as an electrical animation, electrical spark animation. And then it bounces Blaine, boiling, boiling, boiling, like a pin ball among all these planets before coming to earth.

And so then I’m thinking I’m watching this and I’m thinking, oh, so this is supposed to be kind of a throwback to those campy movies, but then it, the family. Is just so weird and the acting is over the top, trying to be bad. The 

Craig: intentional, yeah, it’s intentional. It’s all 

Todd: intentionally dumb and goofy and silly and bad.

So it’s not, it doesn’t even work as a throwback to those movies, which were earnest, you know, they were bad. But they were earnest. And 

Craig: so I know it is, I’ve been nervous about what we’re going to say. Um, because the plot basically just comes down to the monster beams itself into their house via the television, and then hi-jinks and SU VN, like that’s, there’s not much to talk about.

Oh, there’s a lot to talk about, I guess. I don’t know. Um, I know they are, but what I was going to say was when I saw that bad, um, other planet set, which, you know, clearly looked like a model that, you know, some effects crew had put together just hodgepodging things together. Like one part. Is a model of the star ship enterprise just flipped upside down and like kind of modified.

And I wouldn’t have noticed that, but then when I read it, I’m like, oh yeah, I totally see that now. Um, when I first saw all that, I’m like, oh, this could be fun. You know, it reminded me of, um, was it galaxy of terror that we watched with Aaron? Yeah, where they had, you know, those same similar, cheap looking, but kind of fun looking set pieces and backdrops and things of that.

Okay. That’s what we’re getting into, but we leave space immediately and come to earth where we meet this family and everybody in this family, except for the grandpa who I didn’t look into, but everybody in the family. There’s a mom and the dad, um, Raquel and Stanley. And then there’s two kids, Sherman who is young, like a, uh, a young boy played by Chad Allen, who was really the only one who I really recognized.

Cause he ended up doing a lot of TV in the house. Uh, he was on, um, that show our house with Deidre hall and so recognizable the old guy from the thing. I can’t think of his name, but Wilford room. Yeah. He was on that show. He, I think he was on my two dads, which I really liked for shadow. Um, but, uh, and then there’s a sister who’s.

Susie. And I don’t have written down the name of the girl who played her done. Diane Franklin. Who’s been in a lot of stuff that we’ve seen. She was in, um, Amityville too. 

Todd: Yeah. She 

Craig: boned her brother. Right. And she’s been in lots of things. The mom. Uh, Mary Woronov ha has a very striking appearance. She’s very tall and she has very sharp features.

She’s she’s beautiful. I mean, she’s kind of exotic is not the right word, but she has a very, you know, unique look. Um, and she’s been in touch. And some horror movies. If you’re a horror movie fan, you are going to recognize this lady and the dad, Garrett Graham. I didn’t even look at the stuff that he’s been in, but I know that I’ve seen him in a million things.

He has a really distinctive face. 

Todd: Oh yeah. He has almost 200 credits on IMDP. The guy’s been all over the place. 

Craig: And I wouldn’t even say I was getting ready to say, but I wouldn’t even say it’s full of all these famous people. Well, they’re not really super famous. They just work a lot, which is great. And, you know, commendable, but seriously having seen most of these people and other things you just have to know from the get go that they are hammering.

Up on purpose, like ridiculous over the top reactions to everything, the dialogue is just silly and stupid and they deliver it with such enthusiasm, like kudos. Kudos to you for doing what you were clearly here to do. They were making a dumb movie and they knew it. And eventually, uh, the girl who, you know, is super eighties, like punk, like slash Madonna, Cindy lopper, right?

Inspired, huge hair, all different colors, like the two, two skirts. And, and I mean, it’s great. Eighties. I love that bit. 

Todd: The kinds of things she’s saying, like grody and, and I mean, this is full of eighties slang and that was fun for me. 

Craig: Well, I feel like it’s full of real eighties slang, but then also slang that nobody ever did use.

But it sounds so eighties that like you get the aesthetic, like eventually she has. Uh, boyfriend, I guess, for lack of a better word, this guy, his name is O D okay. His word for cool is rude. Like, oh man, that’s so rude. Like, and he plays like a cross between like a heavy metal guy slash valley girl in the way that he talks,

you got to come in my pants. Want to meet you? Uh, well, what a drag and even him, even him, I recognized I’m like, who is that guy? His name’s John Grise. And he is a working actor. He has done a whole lot. Um, ultimately what I ended up recognizing him for. Was one of my favorite eighties movies, real genius with Val Kilmer.

I loved, I still love that movie. He, I don’t remember what the name of his character was, but he played this weird guy that like, In the underground system, underneath the dorms of the college in this movie. And again, I’ve seen him in other stuff and I’ve seen that he really can act like we’re not talking, you know, Royal Shakespeare company, but he’s capable of acting.

And in this it’s just hammy and it’s just, I think it’s hard for me to get on board with it. In a movie. If I’m seeing a, if I’m seeing a play live in a theater and it’s slapstick and it’s goofy. And over the top, I am on board. Like I am thinking, oh, look at these actors and, you know, going above and beyond to be silly and make me laugh.

And there’s something about that live experience where you’re in an audit. And the other people around you are laughing. And so you laugh because it’s so silly. Meanwhile, I’m sitting and watching this movie at work on my brain. Like this is so fucking stupid. Uh, it was hard to get on board with, and it’s a short movie and it was too long.

Todd: This movie felt like ages. I could not believe that it was short, only a hundred minutes. Is that right? No less. No, it’s an hour and 24 minutes. And it felt like two and a half hours. It was, it was a nightmare. And you know, I don’t know. I. It’s just the way you can describe it as this, just like all the obvious jokes are thrown out.

That’s what makes them bad, right? Like there’s a Medusa on, uh, sorry. There’s a woman like a horror host that pops on television that becomes a character in the movie later. And instead like Elvira, except her name is Medusa. And at one point. The flips on the screen and grandpa sees her and he goes, well, 

Craig: you look at those Hooters, holy tomato.

Todd: I mean, that is what we’re talking about here. It’s so weird that this movie goes to such great pains to avoid cursing and swearing that it uses really childish substitutions and anywhere it can be thrown in it’s it’s. You know, so people were saying my goodness, 

Craig: oh God. Yeah. It’s, it’s just, it’s a struggle.

It’s a struggle to eat. No, what to talk about? So here’s my proposal. Let’s, let’s just real quick layout the plot. And then let’s just talk about some of the interesting or funny things. Okay. So, um, the plot is this alien. Monster gets inadvertently sent to earth and it comes to them via their TV satellite.

And as soon as it like through a bolt of what looks like they assume is lightning like a, an electrical surge or something, and it goes directly into their satellite. And before that their satellite wasn’t really working, but now all of a sudden it’s getting great reception from all over the world. But it also gets weird stuff.

Like just these images of these giant monstrous eyes, looking out and stuff, and like images of these big monsters and they think it’s programming, but they also think that it’s weird because like, nothing’s happening. Like it’s just an eye looking around and the image of a monster. And I looking at them or what.

They also get like foreign TV porn, which, which they all stand around and watch together for a while. Like what, like turn the channel, your children are there. 

Todd: Well, come on these parents though, they’re 

Craig: not going to tell. I know, I know. I know. And will, that’s one of the things that I want to get to, but so eventually.

Uh, the parents leave and the sister leaves on the date. And so it’s just the son and the grandpa there. And the monster comes out of the TV, scares them, chases them around in the silliest fashion. And I say, chases, it doesn’t really 

Todd: there. One minute has gone the next, I think it’s zapping in and out of the TV.

Yeah. And they have these televisions all over the house. And so that’s kind of how it’s moving around. 

Craig: Well, and when it does appear and you see it, it’s all practical. It’s a big, it looks like huge. Yeah. And it reminds me of, oh, I don’t even know. It’s just a big gooey pile, like a big red wet dewy 

Todd: pile.

Yeah. It’s like the thing, a little shop of horrors. What was that one movie we watched? With that thing in the basement. I don’t remember, 

Craig: but that’s what I was thinking of too. That pack of the 

Todd: it’s a billion teeth and looked like a Dick. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And it’s got this one looks more like a pilot crap, but it’s got like three eyes on its face.

And then it’s also got like a. With an eye on it that can move around and it changes all the time. Like it can shoot different things out of its mouth. Like it has one tongue that like is obviously a goal. I love that digits that can, you know, grab things and stuff. At one point it shoots out almost like an alien esque, something out of its mouth that also has a head in the mouth and like eats somebody’s face and yeah.

Um, and so it’s not really mobile. Like it can move around and they suggest that it’s moving, like chasing people, but you don’t really see it because it’s really just the. Prop, I’m sure with several people in their puppets here, bring it, it chases them all around the house. It ends up eating the grandpa.

The parents ended up coming back and bringing home a couple of swingers with them. Which again, I want to talk about, I just feel like we can race through the block cause it’s so easy. It kills the parents and the. Um, the sister and the boyfriend come home, uh, and then like they get attacked by it, but then they domestic, yeah.

Todd: Start 

Craig: the movie, takes a dog, eating it. 

Todd: All of a 

Craig: sudden they even make an ETA. Um, and like they feed it, like start teaching it how to talk and it can say words like TV and they teach it as names and stuff, but then it goes crazy again and it eats the boyfriend. And then the sister and the brother called the TV host Medusa and ask her to come.

Oh, uh, eventually aliens. What? 

Todd: Yeah, annotation worker who beamed him down there in the first place. Who’s who’s been coming on the television repeatedly throughout 

Craig: giving Warren warnings 

Todd: to earth or whatever, like shut off your TVs and close down your satellite dishes. 200 years for 200 years, James himself in there, and he’s talking to the kids and he’s like, okay, I’m going to go get it.

And Medusa pops in and thinks that he’s going to attack the kids. And so she whacks him over the head. I love that part actually, that was funny and instantly killed. This guy is funny. 

Craig: Cause she breaks like he’s wearing like a full, like a dome over his head and she breaks it and it light. Not pressure.

Todd: It explodes it’s there. And then when he falls to the ground, the kid goes over there. It was like, wake up, wake up, stay 

Craig: with me.

Todd: Yeah. Inside that dome. 

Craig: And they’re like, and the kids are like, what are you doing? You killed him. And she’s like, ah, I saved you. And they’re like, no, he was the only one who could save us. And then the monster burst through the wall and he’s got like vacuum power, which bag seen before. Like he can suck things in.

And so he starts sucking everything in and like we see Medusa and the brother and sister. Like struggling against it. And then it cuts to black and then it’s the next morning and Medusa’s driver or producer or whatever is asleep in the car. And, uh, we see the monster claw, wake him up. And then, um, it’s like the Medusa monster, because what this monster can do is it can like eat things and then like assimilate them into its own body and, and kind of like.

Mimic them or whatever. Um, and so the very last scene is half Medusa, half monster, and she’s like, get me to the studio stat. And then that’s the end. That is the whole plot.

Todd: I think we fulfilled our duty here. Haven’t we? I 

Craig: mean, yeah. And, and honestly, that’s all you need to know. You don’t need to watch them 

Todd: fast 

Craig: forward through it. If you want. Now you can tell your friends what it’s about and that’s it. But some of the funny, ridiculous things, one of my favorite things is that this is all staged on a set that is meant to be so the, the directors or producers or whoever.

Scouted all of these Los Angeles, swingers bars and swingers pads, um, because the parents are swingers to design the aesthetic of this house. And the aesthetic of this house is insane. No children like like the department of children and family services should be called. Because no children should be raised in this house where every wall is decorated in like wallpaper, but like,

art deco, 

Todd: like really tasteful porn, weird abstracted, Salvador, Dali stuff of like boobs, stick it out of towers and things on every wall. And then it also has that kind of Roman aesthetic as well. Oh, they also have a pool, an indoor pool. This house goes on forever. This house is massive. I want to know what they do for a living.

Craig: An indoor pool, which it is because it is like the size of a small pool, but it’s also like a jacuzzi and that’s there, that’s the parents, what do they call it? Their pleasure dome or their pleasure palace or something like that. Pleasure to home

nutrition, architects. Greek influenced Roman guy Roman all the way then like this, the daughter at one point after she introduces ODI to the parents, she’s like, can we use the jacuzzi later? And the mom’s like, no, we might be swinging later. Like, just talk about this stuff in front of their kids. And they bring sweet.

Couple’s home with them while their kids are there. Like, and, and the grandpa lives with them and he has. A fallout bunker. Yes. 

Todd: Ramp is like tired veteran or something, and he’s a little crazy and he’s kind of a survivalist thing. And he’s doing this thing, which I actually thought was going to come into play later about lizard tails, he’s going on and on about lizard tails and how they regenerate themselves.

And so they’re an endless source of food and protein, and this is what we’re all gonna need to eat, you know? The bomb gets dropped. And so he’s got like a little business going, I guess, where he’s raising these lizards and making lizard tail jerky. And I thought that was going to like actually come into play and not just be a quirky thing that grandpa does, but it didn’t 

Craig: no, you just see his tank full of lizards.

At some point, but I did. I mean, a little stuff like that. It’s goofy. It’s funny to talk about, but in the context of the whole thing, it’s like, ah, it’s like, it’s just so gross or like, oh, okay, good. He and the, the grandson sit watching TV, eating their lizard, tail jerky. And he tells the whole story about, like you said, how it always regenerate.

So it’s an endless supplier or whatever. Yeah. It’s gross and stupid. It’s on its own. It’s funny. But just in the grand context of this ridiculous movie, it’s just like, you’re just rolling your eyes constantly, but yeah, like, so the house, it has all of that stuff and it’s. I think that we’re supposed to think that these people are at least well to do.

Cause like you said, it’s a big house. It’s got a pool inside. It’s got a fountain, like an Aphrodite fountain where water shoots out of her nipples. Yeah. And this is just all out unfold display for everybody to see. They’re proud of it. Uh, the kids like just act like it’s nothing, like, I guess they live there.

So whatever 

Todd: then leads itself to a ton of sex jokes. And I feel like it’s more of a sex comedy, a bad sex comedy than anything, because most of what we described to you as the plot kind of revolves around these parents who brought their swinger guys home. One of them is a at first I thought he was funny.

But then he turns out he’s Greek ha, 

Craig: which he makes a huge deal out of. Oh my God. Gosh. 

Todd: That whole bit was tortured. It’s torture watching some of this stuff. It’s they bring this to this other couple over and she has this real high mousy voice. And he’s like, uh, I don’t know, like fantasy island, who was the guy on fantasy island, Ricardo.

Oh, gosh, he has that air. Yeah. Yeah. And he has that air about them. And also that look to him and the parents are just taking them around and showing them the place. And it’s these rooms go on and on and they’re making all these jokes and they’re these insinuations and they’re showing them the television and his, all of, you know, he’s.

Uh, these giant remotes with 15 buttons and knobs and things on them and a little mini satellite dish of their own around the house, which he also uses to control like the mood lighting and the stereo system. And it’s cute because it’s it’s eighties, you know, so it 

Craig: is, but when, but when you say giant rock.

I imagine that people are thinking of like their great big, huge cable company remote. No, this is like a console bigger than a shoe box. Yeah. Like it’s, it’s he be on a desk and it’s plugged into the wall. Yeah.

So 

Todd: silly. And they just, 

Craig: they eventually they did. Like at one point ha it’s so dumb. Like, because the monster, when the, uh, other alien eventually arrives, he explains to them that these creatures are called hungry beasts and on his planet, they’re domestic house pets like cats and dogs. But, but if they eat like another organism and mutate, when you take action occurs, they must be exterminated at one.

You mean, like he was somebody’s pet. Oh yes. They’re very lovable before they mutate. Okay. But like, how did it get here in our house? In the extermination process, they are converted to pure energy beam, to the farthest reaches of the universe. It’s really a very safe form of waste disposal, except for the fact that it got zapped into your house and made destroy your.

At first, the monster, you know, is just oozing around eating, whoever comes in contact with, but then once the kid’s domesticated, then it’s like the movie kind of tries to make it cute. And it’s cute for a while, but then it sees he’s the other alien on TV. And I guess that triggers it. So it freaks out and it kills the boyfriend, but then it just goes and hangs out in the pool and watches TV.

Laughs at the TV, it’s just hanging out 

Todd: like 1952 monster movies and just watching TV while, while the kids are just 

Craig: roaming around watching a yeah. Watching alien invasion B movies and laughing at the UFO’s, like crashing into the Washington monument and the white house and stuff like that. Oh, super funny.

But eventually the kid Sherman, um, like tries to sneak up on him. By the way through this whole movie, this kid who can’t be more than like eight is walking around with a machine. Yes. The 

Todd: whole time he ever leaves his hands. I don’t think it ever leaves us, even when they’re domesticating it it’s his sister and her boyfriend who were out in the front, like trying to feed it food and stuff like that.

Food. 

Craig: This is called food. It’s good for you. Y’all check it out, dude.

Nice one. 

Todd: And he’s still behind them between them pointing a machine gun at this thing. 

Craig: And there’s at least one point where they’re fleeing from the monster and. The sister is fleeing first, then Sherman then. Oh, so Odie is between the monster and Sherman and Sherman is just opening fire with his machine.

And Odie even says, don’t shoot me, dude.

That’s crazy. Crazy time. But eventually, um, Sherman like drops that enormous. Remote control into the pool and it like, electrocutes the monster, but the monster is seemingly indestructable. They can shoot it with a machine gun. They can do all kinds of, they can electrocute it, they can do all kinds of things.

Um, and nothing works. Um, the whole swingers thing, uh, it just, it just cracked me up. Like that scene was maybe the worst of all of them. It was one of the only ones that I kind of chuckled at. Like the parents are ridiculous in themselves, but then they bring home these swingers and like, it’s so silly.

Like, uh, the, the dad is just ogling cherry you’re right. It’s this little vice. And she talks like this. It’s and she’s an actress. I don’t know what kind of actress she is, but supposedly she’s an actress. And then the typical smarmy European that we saw in eighties movies all the time, like this exact same guy could have played this exact same role.

Yeah. It does an eighties movie. Yeah. And 

Todd: he probably did. He’s got a credits too. He’s got a ton of credits. Chondro Ray, 

Craig: God 

Todd: spear bureau. He’s like, I make a wonderful margarita. Yeah. 

Craig: Do you have any ouzo 

Todd: then he goes and he’s pouring drinks for them, which is just pouring liquor from one bottle. All the way up to the top of these glasses and then drops little umbrellas in each one.

I guess this was supposed to be funny, right? It’s supposed to be fun. He is talking with the wife while the fathers has left for a little while and the Sherry is off, I think, at the pool hanging out. Oh yeah. She goes off, hanging out with the father and she’s talking to Spiro and Spiro is sort of starting to hint at how.

Nice looking Stanley is or whatever like that. And he’s like, what? You don’t mean you can’t, you 

Craig: can’t gloss over this. It’s the only funny joke

he’s like, so telling me is Stanley eman, the man. Oh 

Todd: God. Yes. A real 

Craig: stallion. No. What I mean is does Stanley take it like an eye? Yeah. I guess, so I thought so. And what about you spear out? Are you a veal manly man? It is in the spirit of zeros. Is the manliest of men. Spiro. Do you think that maybe I could have a little sneak preview?

Yeah. Has there been some misunderstanding?

What do you mean? Well, I’m Greek, you know? Oh, of course. You’re Greek. It said so in the classifies. Oh, don’t worry. We’re not prejudiced. No, you don’t understand. I am into Greek Greek culture. I like boyish. Stommelen lays such a man.

Like all Greeks are gay. Oh my God. It’s so funny and stupid. But as soon as I heard him say, Kenny, Take it like a man. I like, oh my God. That is so stupid. And so funny. That was the only part that I thought was really funny. Yeah. 

Todd: Well, what’s hilarious is she’s like, um, um, oh, there’s going to be a problem. I need to tell Stanley and then Stanley comes in and he leaves and she’s like, um, Stanley there’s something you should know.

Blah-blah-blah in the meantime. The girls getting eaten by somebody by the monster at the pool. We 

Craig: don’t see it. We don’t see that. Um, but that scene though, I kind of liked 

Todd: because, oh, that seems good. But just a second Stanley. And uh, his wife are chatting and she’s already told him this and he, he looks at her, he goes, oh, well, I’m just going to have to go and have a talk with him about the facts of life.

And I’m thinking what happened to this incredibly open-minded couple here. Right? Then they goes in and there’s the pool. And the pool looks like. Crap. It’s all the stuff. And Stanley says, 

Craig: what the hell did that hobo do to the Jacos?

Todd: I almost fell off the sofa.

Craig: That was funny that right before that. Okay. So what’s, what’s his name? Spiro Stanley comes in where Spiro and Raquel are and Raquel says, oh, Spiro may be better take Raquel. Her Drake she’s in the pool. So Spiro goes in there and she is in the pool and she’s sitting at the end of it seductively, but now as never before the pool is covered in a dense layer of fog, And it actually looked kind of like, we didn’t see what happened, but you know what happened because we’ve already seen that the monster, once it eats, somebody can mimic them.

We saw that with the grandpa. And so you assume that that’s not really cherry at the end of the pool. Um, it’s, it’s the monster. And so Spiro takes off his clothes. Both these men end up. Glorious eighties, Speedos, which I thought was hilarious. And he’s ripped too, man. He, well, 

Todd: okay. You didn’t notice, oddly enough, 

Craig: I wasn’t 

Todd: shocked.

I must’ve been looking away at Facebook at that point or something. There’s two, 

Craig: I guess maybe I was just too hypnotized by the magic of the speed up to now. Um, but like Spiro. Uh, gets into the pool with her and he sits down and he’s like, eh, what is this algae? And he pulls up this slimy goo out of the pool and he’s like, oh, maybe it’s sex lubricant.

And then. He starts making his way seductively towards her. And clearly his sexuality is very fluid. Good for him for being open. Cause he, uh, is he, he’s saying to cherry, maybe we should just have a quickie real quick before they get back. And he’s slowly easing towards them and she’s basically just sitting there, but very seductive, like you can only see her hands, but her head is 

Todd: also kind of bobbing and moving in a very unnatural way, which I think.

Was a nice touch. I actually thought that was super creepy in a movie where there’s not much of that. It was really 

Craig: well, and it was subtle in a movie where there’s no subtlety, right? Yeah. It was, it was moving kind of unnaturally. Right. Relatively subtle. And it was kind of, it was effective. I agree with you, but right.

As he gets close to her, these giant jaws jump up out of the water around him and clap around him. And it reminded me of Tokyo gore police. Tokyo.

like the alligator vagina totally got him and then they’re dead. And then, yeah. And like you said, the other two come in and, and the parents come in and see that the pool is all gross. And then they’re like, wait, is there something in there? And then they just stand there and shocked horror as the monster jumps up.

Um, Then we cut back to the kids who are in the bunker, I think, and they hear their parents screaming. Most of these deaths happen off screen, or the beginning of them happen. Like you see the giant jaws clap around. Spiro or whatever, but that’s it. I mean, you don’t see blood, you don’t see, you don’t see people like agonizing in pain.

I mean, it 

Todd: just happens a little bit like grandpa’s death was, you know, that thing clamped his head and it had a shot of his head almost like cave in right. His face kind of collapsed. And the green goo was sort of flowing out of him and stuff. So there’s 

Craig: a little, that was probably the best special effects was grandpa’s face.

Uh, Not, I don’t know. It’s like a melted off. I know it’s kind of, it’s 

Todd: like a balloon peeled off lapsing. I’ve thought of it more of like a balloon cooler. 

Craig: Yeah. But again, but, but no blood, the only thing that you see is like green goo, no blood ever. So then it’s basically just the kids trying to figure out what they’re going to do.

And, um, before they find the monster. Just as soon as the sister and her boyfriend get back, the, the kid is trying to tell them that there’s a monster and a grandpa and an eight mom and dad or something. I don’t know. The sister and the brother are just looking around the house and they end up at the parents bedroom and they knock on the door.

Cause they hear something in there. They. End up opening it and they see now mind you, all of these people have already been eaten. They see the mom and the dad in bed with the swingers and the sisters like, Ooh, mom and dad. That’s gross. They’re like, I don’t even remember 

Todd: what they said.

Craig: And then 

Todd: grandpa’s head pops up underneath the covers right here, sweetie. Just taking 

Craig: care of business, grandpa that’s nasty. And then they just closed the door. Like that was weird.

When the grandpa popped up, I left from under the covers, like. What were you doing over there? Like

Todd: that was the funniest part of the movie. I thought that was the only actual joke I thought landed. 

Craig: I agree with you. And that part reminded me of society. Yes. And I actually think that this movie has a lot in common with society. Um, but society as weird, it’s one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen, but as weird a movie as it is in terms of quality.

Above and beyond 

Todd: this, that’s interesting, 

Craig: right? Yeah. But it’s different approaches. Like this movie is clearly going for the comedy, whereas that movie was going for the shock value. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. But, but they both had kind of overacting odd campiness. But it was, it also was kind of held up, uh, unease know it was like a structure that sort of just held up a weird unease about the movie.

And like you said, at the end of the day, it got really shocking and there was mystery to it. I mean, there was a real plot there. Yeah. And, and this it’s like, this is like a couple of 13 year olds, you know, sat down and wrote this book. 

Craig: Which is fine. Like I was trying to think about what I was going to say about it, because I would, I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would ever watch this movie again, but I was trying to think when would be the appropriate time to watch this movie, if you were intentionally seeking out, like let’s get a bunch of buddies together and let’s have a, a bad movie.

This would be fine for that. You know, like if, if the whole point was that you just wanted to goof on something, um, then there’s plenty of material here for that it’s silly and, and stupid. And, but I almost can’t even be too critical of it because. I know that these actors and actresses are talented. I’m not gonna say that, you know, they’re award worthy actors and actresses, but they are consistently working performers.

They know what they’re doing and they know what they’re doing in this movie. It’s schlock. It’s stupid. That’s what they’re going through. And if that’s what you’re in the mood for then great. I didn’t know what I was getting into, you know, I was just going into it to watch a movie and I just don’t, I wasn’t in the right mindset.

Todd: Yeah. But it’s not AB it’s not naked gun, you know? I mean, naked gun is dumb juvenile humor, but there’s something way more sophisticated about it. The timing is good. The jokes are. Somehow they land and this is totally not. It’s like, they’re not even trying to land. I don’t know. I’m finding it really hard to describe, to be honest.

Yeah. But once you see it you’ll know, Hey, by the way, while you’re watching this, did you, uh, get the overwhelming urge to pop up at a Heineken 

Craig: heinie? Yeah, I, I wish I had. Like 12. 

Todd: And he was like one of the first lines in the movie when dad was out in the back, setting up that giant satellite dish was, Hey, hand me a high.

And here I am, I’m at a heinie. And then another guy comes in. He’s like, I’m going to get a heinie. And they’re sitting there drinking Heineken two or three times during the rest of the movie, they keep getting a heinie or picking up a heinie. And then during the Medusa call, when, when the kid calls the Medusa, the second time she’s sitting there on the phone and she calls.

For a Heiny and then the stage hands, hand pops into the screen to hand it to her with the label, like flat out towards us. And I thought, did they somehow sponsor this, get some product placement in here? Or are they making a joke about product place? 

Craig: I know, no, I didn’t put that much thought into that.

That escaped you, huh? Yeah. Well, I mean, I noticed, they mentioned Heineken several times. Another interesting thing to me, like. I noticed. Yes, I did notice that they were constantly referring specifically to that brand name of beer. I don’t know anything what that’s about, but you mentioned a Medusa. I feel like they’re, first of all, if you’re interested in trivia, you can read it about how the casting was almost very different.

Um, the woman who ends up playing the woman who ends up playing Raquel, they originally envisioned her as Medusa. They, somebody else. Stand somebody that, uh, we’ve seen a million times. All I can think of him from our gosh, what, what, what’s the photo documentary about the rock band? Why can’t I not spite?

This is spinal tap, right? Yeah. Lloyd something I think is his name. He was originally going to be hairy sheriff that’s right. That’s right. Was originally going to be standard and, and, um, eighties rock. A bad girl. What is her name? Belinda Carlisle was going to be a Suzie, which I totally could see. Um, I could see all of those things, but the, the Medusa character was obviously inspired by those late night horror hosts like Elvira, but there were, you know, there’s Vampira and, you know, even Rhonda shear and all, yeah.

All of those, all of those folks, she was clearly inspired by that. Those things are things that appeal to me and had this moving, not been so intentionally stupid. I think I would have really been on board with it. I love the eighties. I love eighties nostalgia. I loved the exaggeration of Susie’s look, you know, because it was so nice, but it was over the top.

I loved that. Um, I could have even gotten on board with the eighties aesthetic of the house if it hadn’t been so over the top, but everything was so over the top, it just, it didn’t even feel right. Real. Yeah, it didn’t feel authentic. Like I love eighties stuff and I’m, I’m, I’m totally fine. You know, the eighties were a really goofy time.

You look at any of those old 80 movies and it was goofy, but this. So in your face stupid that I just, it just wasn’t for me. And I imagine, you know, this, this movie, it got pulled out of theaters after four days. I’m surprised it made it to theaters at all that it got pulled out of theaters after 14. But supposedly there’s a cult following for it, which really doesn’t surprise me because anything that’s eccentric and off the wall, um, tends to find a cult following.

And that’s great. And if you are somebody. Listeners. If you are somebody who can enjoy the camp of this movie, I applaud that I don’t want to take, in fact, I’m hesitant, can’t even steer people away from it, because if that’s what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for camp, if you’re looking for nonsense, something that you don’t have to devote any kind of thought or attention to.

I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah. I don’t think that I was in the right state of mind for it. I was sober.

I was at work like these. This did not create the experience that I think that you would need to intentionally create. If you want to have friends over and pop some popcorn and order some pizza and drinks. Whatever you want to drink and smoke some, whatever you want to smoke and watch this movie while you can still goof on it and talk and not have to worry about missing anything important.

I think there’s an environment where it could be fun. Yeah. But I was not in that environment.

Todd: I have nothing else to add to that. That’s another one of my childhood memories brought to the harsh light of reality, 

Craig: right?

Yeah. All right. That’s it. Wrap it up.

Well, thanks 

Todd: again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share with a friend. You can find us online, just search for two guys in a chainsaw podcast. You’ll find our website, our Facebook page, and our Twitter feed. Leave us a comment there. Let us know what you thought of this movie in this episode.

Give us some other suggestions for a future movies to review as well until that future time. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Thanks to Ashley for recommending we plow forward through the Slumber Party Massacre series – the first and only horror series to be directed entirely by women.

I mean, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s great. In fact, the sequel to the original is bizarre and strange. But that certainly gave us a lot to talk about – particularly the Driller Killer’s inexplicable update to a baffling dream-demon-slash-rockabilly-badass. Song and dance numbers abound. Check out our review of this video store hit!

Episode 266, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, we’re hitting up another request. This came from Ashley via our Facebook page. She sent us a message direct saying, I just listened to your sleep-away camp episode. Please do the sequels and the slumber party masker seat.

Ha thank you, Ashley, for this request, uh, we probably will start doing some sleepaway camp, uh, sequels at some point, but because we had recently watched Slumber Party Massacre, I suggested to Craig, this would be a good week to do Slumber Party Massacre 2, which is a movie that I was so intrigued by as a kid, the cover.

Was the first one is very suggestive, right? With those girls kind of have new bile rolling around on the floor with a guy standing over them and a drill coming out between his legs. Uh, and this one, um, is a bunch of girls kind of half standing, half on the ground and a guy who looks like. I don’t know, like he came out of an eighties, heavy metal band or something standing with his leather jacket and all leather and a wicked, wicked looking, huge guitar with a drill on the end.

Also aimed downwards from his crotch. We talked from our slumber party massacre episode. That there’s is a series of movies produced by Roger Corman. And they all happen to be directed and written by women as well. Go, go check out our episode for the first one. The first one was written by noted famous feminist author, Rita Mae brown.

And we talked quite a bit about that and try to do our best to kind of deconstruct what ends up being a silly movie. This movie, um, my history with it. I know I saw it on USA. And I think the movies even weirder with commercial breaks because it’s already pretty odd. And I remember it being very disorienting and very amateurish feeling and also just kind of like.

What is this supposed to be and what is going on? Like I was so aware I was watching a movie that some people made. It’s just weird. This movie is so weird. Craig, it’s not strangest thing we’ve seen, I guess, but I was really anxious to come back to it and see if it was as weird as I remembered it being.

And it was even a little more bizarre that I remembered it being. So anyway, that’s my grand master view on it. Thank you, Howard. How about you, Craig? What was, what was your experience with this movie? You. I don’t

Craig: know. It’s funny to me that you say, oh, slumber party, masker. It’s been something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

It’s been something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Yeah. The Royal we, yeah. And so we just did it recently. Pretty bad.

Oh, just weeks later you’re like, let’s choose Slumber, right? You’re masker too. Okay.

Todd: May be only in service to our fans, Craig, you know, I would never suggest if this, if Ashley hadn’t brought it up,

Craig: that’s fair enough. And I do also have to be fair because every week we talk about a movie and then we turn off our.

Recording devices. And then we chat for a while and we talk about what we’re going to do next week. And I’m always like, oh, well, we’ll think about it. And we’ll, you know, we’ll come up with something and then I never recommend anything. So yeah.

Todd: So it always falls on me. So you get what you get, it

Craig: gets to like Thursday or Friday and you’re like, okay, well here’s what we’re doing.

And I’m like, oh, okay.

Todd: One of these weeks you’ll wise up.

Craig: I guess. Uh, I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. I didn’t know anything about it other than what we’ve already talked about in having talked about this. And then, uh, they’re also related to the sorority. The house massacre movies. So we we’ve talked about several of them. This has come up, we’ve talked about the whole rock and roll guitar, uh, drill shtick.

I’d never seen it. Uh, I don’t remember specifically being drawn to it in the video store really well. I imagine I probably saw it, but thought it looked really stupid.

And I’ve said before, like that’s usually not what I seek out. Like, you know, every once in a while I’ll come across a movie. That is stupid, but that I’ll think is really funny or clever or, or just funny and how bad it is, but that’s not usually what I’m seeking out. It’s just usually something that I stumble upon.

And so I never watched this movie. And now I have,

what’s funny is it’s funny to me because I honestly, I was really surprised to see that it is a direct sequel. It’s not just, oh, it’s another slumber party and, oh, there’s another killer. No, it’s a direct sequel to the first

Todd: day. Surprising. I didn’t remember that either. And I wouldn’t have assumed that

Craig: well, because it doesn’t have to be like, I don’t know if they wrote it intentionally for it to be a direct SQL.

I imagine they probably did, but it could have just been another slumber party movie, and they just made one of the characters, one of the characters from the previous movie, the beautiful girl, next door valor. Had an annoying little sister Courtney in the first movie and Courtney is now, I don’t know, older, still a teen nature.

19. I think she was supposed to be 14, 15 in the first movie. And so now she’s like 19 and, um, the setup. I actually kind of liked, like she’s, she’s still dealing with the aftermath of what happened in the first movie and the opening scene. She’s dreaming. And at first she’s dreaming about the dreamy boy, Matt, that she has a crush on, but then it switches into the.

Um, flashbacks from the first movie and they’re recreated flashbacks because it’s not the same actress. Um, from the first movie, uh, in this movie, Courtney has played by crystal Bernard, who, if you are our age in your forties, ish, you will probably remember from the sitcom wings. The sit-com wings was about this little regional airport.

And, um, she played the queue. I think she was like the airport manager or something. I don’t know. She’s tiny. She was blonde and had big blonde hair in that movie. She has big brunette hair in this one. But she’s cute. And I remembered her from that and I was like, oh yeah, her fun. So, you know, she, she dreams this cute guy, but then it cuts to flashbacks.

And then she wakes up and her mom played by Jennifer Rhodes, who. Everything in the eighties and nineties, tons of TV and movies. I remember her, she played Veronica’s mom and Heather’s. She also played like the grandmother patriarch in the charms television series. They talk about how Valerie is now in a mental institution, because she’s so plagued by.

Her trauma of what happened in the first movie. And, and so, so that’s the setup. You get this foundation, everything that happened in the first movie happened, um, and now we’ve got this one recurring character and we’re going to follow her then from that point on. The movie just makes absolutely no sense.

Highly nonsensical. There is no explanation for anything it’s only an hour and 17 minutes long. You get halfway through the movie and nothing has happened aside from weird. Dreams and visions and flashbacks. And then the killer shows up and starts killing people. It’s insane. One of the weirdest things, plus I guess that now would be as good a time as any, to mention that it’s a musical

Todd: in a way there are musical numbers in here, at least them.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I described this to a friend of mine today. I said it, it was mostly a girl’s dreams about the killer and her sister. And then the killer pops up in the last 20 or 20 minutes and then drills through pretty much everyone rather quickly while singing a big production number. And yeah, and until there are two of them left and then there’s a really long and boring chase scene through a construction.

And then the killer is this rockabilly guy who thinks he’s funny. And at one point he stops and does a song and dance number for us, for us, for the camera.

Craig: Yeah. Breaking the fourth wall. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. And you know, I think it’s trying for that Freddy thing. I mean, it’s not trying very hard. It’s definitely trying to be that, you know, Freddy kind of more from being this terrifying killer in the first two or three movies to this jokester character who would break the fourth.

Well, I think in the way, yeah. Right. I don’t know, wink at you and talk to you and, and, uh, and say funny things. And, and this was obviously trying to ape some of that with this rocker character who actually wasn’t a bad dancer and wasn’t bad. I think. He was given to do, I would imagine he probably had to improvise a ton of what he was doing.

So. You know, there was that, but it’s, it’s super campy and hammy. Yeah. You know what, what he is doing. You

Craig: say stuff like this all the time, and I don’t know if anybody else appreciates it, but I come from a theater background. Um, and I feel like this could be really, really fun on stage. Like it’s so campy, it’s super, super campy.

It’s like a psycho beach party kind of camp. And maybe that would work really well. And I don’t know, like, as I was watching it, I was trying to think in what scenario this movie would be fun. And I thought, well, if I was a teenage girl in the eighties and I was having a slumber party, this might be funny and fun and silly, or if I was at a drive-in yeah.

And was more focused on like making out and this was happening in the background. That might be good atmosphere because you wouldn’t really want to watch the movie anyway. Like you would just want to be making out and stuff

Todd: sneaking out to the sweet, sweet sounds of a drill. Go on.

Craig: I, I imagine there. Is a time and place where this could be a lot of fun. And it did really well, like, oh my, it did super well in video stores. It was one of the top selling VHS cassettes in the year that it came out. I can’t explain to you why

Todd: it wasn’t done critically well received at all, but you’re right.

It made 1.5 million on like a half, a million dollar budget and, and the VHS sales alone and probably rentals. I mean, obviously, but with a cover like that, it’s kind of hard to. I think you’re going to run it just because you’re curious. Cause it’s so different. I mean, that’s one thing I do appreciate about it.

I’m keep thinking. We need to do a theme way a theme month. Cause there aren’t that many of these like heavy metal. Themed horror films. Yeah, we’ve done a couple. We’ve done one, maybe two. And there may be only like four or five more that I’m aware of. This was in my list, like to do for that kind of thing.

I don’t know if it really fits the bill, but it’s got a little bit of that vibe. That idea of like, well, I guess the killer is just rock and roll guy. We don’t know where he’s coming from. We don’t know why he’s there. No, he just is in her

Craig: dream. That really frustrated me. I know that, but that, that really frustrated me because though it is a direct sequel.

It’s not the same killer. I don’t think it’s supposed to be the same killer. They never alluded to the fact that it is the same killer.

Todd: It’s certainly not more that it’s the

Craig: ghost of the same killer or anything like that. Like I said, that the flashback scenes are recreated. One of the main flashbacks that you see is Courtney hiding under a couch as the killer walks nearby.

And so you just see her hiding under the couch and you see the killers boots and the boots are. The new killers boots. Cause they’re like these like rocker, cowboy, silver tips, leather boots. So like, there’s that connection, but that’s the only. Do you think

Todd: that it’s trying to retcon the original by making it seem like this guy was the killer in the original?

I think

Craig: that it’s trying that hard. No, I don’t. Because cause Courtney never says anything like he’s back or they don’t acknowledge one another as though they recognize each other. Like he’s just after her for inexplicable reasons and Courtney like early on. She, oh God, I mean, there’s, there’s silly stuff.

Like after she, you know, has breakfast with her mom or whatever, she walks to school and she sees a dead bird, like. Act like that’s going to be a big deal and it’s not, unless a dead bird is supposed to be an omen or something. I don’t know. Well,

Todd: I think there was implied either. It was in her dreams. So seeing it kind of pop out of her dreams as weird, or it was implied, that was a shot from the previous film.

I don’t

Craig: remember. Then she gets picked up by one of her friends and they have this whole sing along in a car now, like yeah. When I was in high school, I drove around with my friends and we sang like to the radio. That’s something that we did. I don’t know that I need to see a full performance in this car.

Like

Todd: it’s like the whole song. I know. So weird. It is weird. I think there are two things I think are going on here. Number one, especially cause I was curious about all the music. So I went back and I watched the end credits and I looked up some of the people in there, one of them was a girl band, uh, called weekend Wednesday.

Which sounds a lot like Tuesday morning, but oh, well, uh, it was a girl band in LA at the time contributed one or two songs to this. And Courtney is a member of a girl band and one or two of these musical numbers that we S that we hear are from that band. So I’ve kind of feel like there were some deals made on the production end to try to help promote these bands or to try to get a good soundtrack

Craig: going.

That’s it exactly. It crossed my mind that they were trying to build a soundtrack. I didn’t look to see if there is one. I hope not my God.

Todd: Cause

Craig: I mean, it’s good. I mean, it’s,

the performances are terrible. I mean, no, it’s not like they’re comically bad. It’s just cheesy. With, you know, and they’re cheesy eighties girl band, and they’re all, you know, sexy and very enthusiastic and whatever. I mean, um, sexy guy, man. Like pulls up alongside them while they’re singing in the car. And they invite him to come to their band practice and he does.

So he watches them perform in their like step touching and unison. And the, uh, the drummer is really enthusiastic and that they decide that they’re going to go somebody’s mom. Sheila, I think mom or dad or something, um, has just gotten this new condo and Courtney has to talk her mom into letting her go because Valerie, I guess, has just started talking in the mental institution that she lives in now.

And the mom wants her to wants them to go visit her. And Courtney is like, but mom, it’s my birthday. I want to spend it in a mental institution. I really want to go. I really want to go to this condo. And so the mom gives in and, and they get logs.

Todd: Of of her and her mom, you know, that was another thing that I don’t think went anywhere, but I think they were trying to, you know, it’s a, it’s a shame.

The movie is so inept because I feel like they had the kernel of some good things and they were almost halfway there in execution. And one of the things that I will give the movie credit for is spending a lot of time and trying to deal with the trauma. Of this family after the sister was murdered in this horrible drilling incident in the previous film?

Well, the sister

Craig: wasn’t murdered, actually the actual sisters, Valerie and Courtney were the ones that killed the killer. Um, they were two of the only, I think three survivors of the whole movie, but you’re right. Like that, that could have been interesting dealing with the aftermath of this, but it’s also very bizarre because.

Courtney continues to have these visions, but they’re not just flashbacks. Like all of a sudden it’s it’s things that appear to be happening in real time. The rocking killer, whatever he is is also tormenting. Valerie and Courtney is C. And Valerie, Valerie warns Courtney through this vision not to go.

She’s like, don’t go, don’t go. And at first I thought she meant like, don’t go to the condo, the party. Right. Which should have made all kinds of sense, but Courtney’s like, what do you mean? Don’t go where, and she’s like, don’t go all the way.

And then. Freddy like manner. And he does this throughout the whole movie. The killer drops a one-liner in this case, it’s rock and roll. Never dies, baby. And then he, Val, he kills Val and like Courtney sees. And like, not only does she kind of see it happening, like in Val’s disgusting asylum cell, but Val also like appears right outside her car window and like streaks blood down the window and Courtney screaming.

But nobody else sees anything. So I don’t know what’s going on at this point. I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if the, the killer really killed Val. I assume that’s what happened or especially, I mean, the killer shows up at the end and everybody sees him. But up through the first half of the movie, I really thought maybe Courtney was just.

Todd: Yeah, well, this is what I’m going to give the movie a little bit of credit here in that. I think those were all visions and I thought that it was, these were dreams, daydreams, visions, like of a traumatized person or person who’s dealing. You know, a certain degree of grief. They’re very upset that a sister is in the mental institution.

It’s clearly caused a rift in the family. The mom is just like kind of stumbling around catatonic, their dinner scene, where they’re just sitting. There is super long and kind of boring. And again, this is ineptly done, but I could see they were going to really play up their relationship between mom and daughter had been kind of broken because of this incident and their SIS.

The fact that they’re sisters now in this asylum. And Courtney is trying to pretend like everything is fine, especially for her mom, but we see that she’s tormented by these dreams throughout the day. And these dreams, you know, I mean, that’s pretty typical of dreams. They go all over the place and they don’t make a lot of sense.

And so I thought that was actually quite nice that they were a little confusing and they did bring in flashbacks from the first movie things that we didn’t really understand or. Couldn’t didn’t know where they came from. Her sister talking directly to her from her crazy mental institution, which I imagine was, you know, her impression of what her sister’s situation is like more than maybe the actual reality.

My idea was that the killer is a rockabilly guy, just because she’s in his band and they’re really into music. And so when she imagines the killer in or comes through in her dreams, that aspect of her personality kind of gets thrown in. Because she’s spending a lot of time with their friends and they’re in this band and they’re rehearsing.

And so they’re writing songs and they’re talking about how they’re going to be big someday day.

Craig: We are going to be in movies and rock videos and everything, because my song is going to be a hit a million years from now when you

Todd: finish writing it. And so this fantasy of hers creeps in there as well. And it also gets mixed with, um, you know, her fantasies of yeah.

Right. We see this, like she’s daydreaming about Matt a whole lot. And then that gets poisoned by the killer. And I mean, again, it’s not skillfully done. I can see what they were going for a traumatized person who, you know, every aspect of their life kind of, you know, gets touched by, in their, in their mind mentally by this thing.

And so she’s seeing her everywhere and people are worried about her. She’s just spacing out. This could have been more fascinating if the movie were more interesting. So, but, but I give them credit for trying. And I also think that it’s very rare in a movie, a horror movie where we see characters sort of.

Break down. Like they really should, like, you’re being chased by a mass killer who you’ve already seen drill through four of your friends previously, and he’s just inches away from you. They’re going to be moments like, especially in those moments when they’re quiet, she just kind of freaks out. She just breaks down in tears and.

I thought it was quite realistic, actually, her acting in that. And I really felt sorry for her in those moments, I felt sorry for her in the middle of this stupid movie, you know, there were moments where I actually felt sorry for her. And I was like, wow. For once I’m seeing a genuine reaction to what a woman, a person who has already been through all this trauma is now having to go through it herself again, would be doing so, ah, that wasn’t too.

Craig: Yeah. And, and it’s, they get to the condos and, and I thought this was kind of a cool set piece and that like, it’s this new development that seems like half of it’s done, and then they’re building more condos nearby, but nobody has moved in yet. That’s brilliant.

Todd: Yeah, I like

Craig: that. That, that was pretty cool.

Um, and then there are definitely like throwbacks. I don’t know. I get these movies mixed up. Cause they’re all the same. I will, I will say this, this one is different. It’s more different than many of the others that we’ve seen. Oh God. Yeah. But, uh, it the same and that. They get there and the girls I’ll put on their like skimpy PJ’s and they have a carpet picnic with like killer corndogs.

And then, then another dance number. Uh, a musical movie comes on TV, so they have a dance number and two boys, TJ and Jeff who are coupled up with two of the girls who aren’t Courtney. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Um, show up. Just like, I mean, these two guys are almost carbon copies. Two of the guys from the first movie and it’s almost the exact same scene and that they knock on the door there early and they knock on the door and the girls don’t hear because they’re having a party.

So instead they go around and peek in the window to see the girls, you know, having a pillow fight and shooting champagne all over one another and taking their clothes off and dancing and like feathers from the pillows are flying. Um, one of the boys in the window is even like, I didn’t know, girls really do this.

Like they don’t bro. Yeah.

Todd: But that was a woman who saved this

Craig: movie, Debra Debra rock, like comma. Like I have to imagine that the women who made these movies knew exactly what they were doing. And I re I remember that. The woman who directed the first one in response to a lot of the criticism said this criticism isn’t fair.

Men make these movies all the time. Why can’t I make one of these movies? And I agree, a hundred percent. Yeah. So fine. They knew what they were doing. They knew what audience they were appealing to, but it was really stupid. And I was really pissed that they wasted all that out.

Todd: Right. But don’t you think that was the point of the scene?

Again, maybe giving them a little too much credit, but the movie is also not meant to be taken seriously. I mean, it’s intentionally a comedy in some ways, right? It’s intentionally comedic, I should say. And so I felt like this was a direct thumbing, their nose at this sort of thing. Like of course, girls don’t really do this, in fact, in this movie, as opposed to.

Couple of the other sorority slumber out party. Maskers we’ve seen the girls are not that skimpily dressed. They’re not running around in like these negligee days with barely nothing on they come into this scene and then they start being ridiculous and like spraying champagne over each, each other.

This one girl like just takes her top off and pulls her own bra, you know, like it’s funny. And the other girl is doing it. Not only are they having a pillow fight, but like one of them like tears open a pillow and start sprinkling feathers everywhere. Like it’s like a cartoon pillow fight. And then I actually remembered this scene from the movie.

And so when those guys looked in, you just like in every other movie and that guy says on-point, I didn’t know that girls actually did this sort of thing. I was like, yeah, like that’s the punchline to this. You know what I mean? And then as soon as it’s done, they clean up real fast. Like she puts her Bron, she puts her top on suddenly everything’s dry and they just keep on going with a movie, like, like that didn’t just happen.

And from then on there’s no more nudity or anything like that. And that’s true. I thought it was more of a joke. That’s

Craig: sweet. Oh yeah. I know. I get it. It was meant to be silly and funny and playful and that’s fine. It’s just so it’s just so corny. Yeah. So the boys come in, TJ who is one of the most insufferable movie characters.

Ever encountered, um, is Sheila’s boyfriend and they have loud sex and that’s a gag that happened several times. Courtney has another dream in which she’s making out with Matt, but then Matt turns into the rocker killer.

Oh, I fed battery. I’m tired of that, right? I just want to make love to you

and you want me to, we’d go all the way,

love the one you’re with, I don’t understand this at either like. Yeah. A P like, and like sh cause she’d already been warned, you know, don’t go all the way with the ghost killer. Like why does he need to see her so bad? Like what is happening? Is this part of

Todd: some ritual that I don’t know about? She warned

Craig: him.

Why just her, like, there’s a whole bunch of other girls. They’re

Todd: like, why? I felt like it was another reference. Like, look, this movie is full of these references, right? Like, uh, there’s like an officer Vorhees and they rename her, her family named Craven. And the other officer is officer Krueger, Krueger.

You know, it’s like, they’re obviously sticking in references to movies here. And I felt this was basically the same. Like, don’t go all the way. Don’t have sex with anyone, especially that guy, Matt, that you’re interested in or else you’re going to be targeted. And I, if I’m not mistaken, I think it was after she had sex with him.

Although it’s not clearly telegraphed, I’m pretty sure the timing is that after she had sex with him or what we assume they had sex, they were about to anyway that the killer sprung into reality. Am I wrong?

Craig: Well, it’s in that scene, but I don’t think they even get that far. Like, I don’t think,

Todd: I mean, well, maybe just maybe just the tip.

Craig: Oh my God. Todd, we have gotten through almost 300 episodes without you saying just the tips. So I guess I should congratulate you on that. That’s

Todd: pretty miraculous, isn’t it? Actually at 13 years old movies bring out the 13 year old in me that some of them the first

Craig: time. Um, but she wakes up after this nightmare on the kitchen floor and she’s crying.

And then the next 15, 20 minutes is Jair being tormented and going nuts. Like TJ is a big jerk. And first of all, you know, she’s not feeling. They they’re all hung over. So they blamed it on blame it on hangovers. But TJ throws her in the pool where she nearly drowns has more visions and has to be rescued.

Then they’re eating lunch and her hamburger is. A human, a bloody human hand, but nobody else sees any of these things, but the killer is clearly taunting her because throughout every time she sees something, every time something is weird, the killer is just maniacally, laughing in the background, like through the whole thing, they have more there’s another band practice montage.

Long then she opens the refrigerator and a raw chicken attacks are, and then she takes a bath and the water turns into blood and the rocker is laughing. And that this is when I wrote in my notes. Okay. We are halfway into the movie and nothing has happened. Until Sally zit, Sally zit, which may have been my favorite part.

She keeps talking about it. It’s like they project the scene. Like there is build to this scene. There is

Todd: great. Well, it, it is kind of classic Freddy though, because in some of those Freddy movies, Ready kind of takes their own fears and nightmares and gonna turn them against them. And clearly Sally is mortified at the possibility that she might have a zit not really on her face, because there’s nothing there, but like under her skin, just waiting to come out.

So she’s obsessing about it. And she keeps saying, Oxy 10, do you remember Oxy 10? Vaguely. Oh God. There were so many product references in this. So many. Yeah, Oxy 10 was like an acne cream. I don’t know if they still make it. Maybe they do. Maybe it’s like Oxy 50 now or something, but, uh, yeah, you put that on your face, on the zit and it dries it out and is supposed to make it, uh, make it go away faster.

And she was, she’s talking about it, like you said, constantly through the movie. And then, uh, when she rushes into it, Courtney when Courtney is freaking out, you know, screaming, ah, there’s blood everywhere. And you know, they go into the bathroom and it’s just overflowing. There’s no blood. Sally turns to her and is like, what is the

Craig: matter?

Come on on your friend, talked to me, are you on drugs or something? I was like, maybe you told her, you weird things are happening to me. I know what you mean. The weirdest things are happening to my face. I mean, I have got the fastest growing bit I’ve ever had in my entire life. I mean, look at this thing, it’s just the grossest thing you’ve ever seen.

We’ll get some more off 10. I mean, it hurts like how

Todd: time she looks up at her. It’s like she has this massive zit on her face. That’s bigger and bigger and bigger. And then it explodes.

Craig: Oh, and you say bigger and bigger, it like it, like it’s deforming her face her face at that point. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s cheap in that.

Cut shots. Like it keeps cutting back and forth. So you, yeah. It’s not like you get to witness the progression. It’s just, it cuts away and then it cuts back and it’s worse and it cuts away and it cuts back and it’s worse. But by the end, like it’s just disgusting. Like, it’s, it’s a huge, huge, practical effect.

Like it looks like half of her face is like melting off with this huge pacy thing in the middle. Uh, and then, yeah, I feel like it explodes all over. Courtney it’s gross. It’s really disgusting. Another part that doesn’t make any sense because Matt shows up, uh, to find Courtney freaking out, but Sally’s missing.

Todd: Yeah. Like where did you jump out the window of the second floor or something like that? Where did she go? Oh, you’re right. It sucks. It’s terrible writing. Cause somehow she’s missing. There’s no good reason why she would be missing, but it’s a mysterious thing and we think, oh, what’s going on? Maybe that really happened.

Maybe the killer Wister away somewhere.

Craig: And they call the cops and the cops come and they hear like, Courtney’s like who turned on the trash compactor? And somebody is like, I don’t know. It was odd when we came in here and you start hearing these horrible noises from the trash compactor and like they all, or at least Courtney thinks that Sally is in the trash compactor, but they don’t look.

No, nobody looks no. And then the cop show. And basically just say what I just said. Okay. So your friend disappeared and now you think she’s in the trash compactor, but nobody looked and they’re all like, yeah.

And then Sally, just show. She walks in the door and they’re like, where have you been? And she’s like, I just stepped out to get more Oxy 10.

Todd: It’s an ad for Oxy 10, just like their ads for diet Pepsi. There’s so many product placements. And product call-outs in this movie. It’s hilarious. I guess this is something that Roger Corman did in the eighties. I don’t remember, but, uh, yeah, so the cops, you know, decide that, uh, don’t you call me again? And the guy says c’mon Krueger Danny’s is holding our booth.

Yeah. Another one what’s weird though, in the cop scene was one of those. I was surprised. At how many point of view shots there were in this movie at times when the characters are having dialogue with each other, they’re looking straight at the camera, like they’re talking to us and it will just be during normal dialogue scenes.

And at first I thought, you know, did the cinematographer and director and this movie, is it, is it a real amateur effort that they don’t know how weird this is, but then when this cop interrogations. Basically the same thing. It’s just very posed scene where this cop is looming over and looking right at us and interrogating the audience like he’s interrogating the girls and it’s, what’s her name?

It’s uh, it’s Courtney. He’s talking to primarily and all the other kids are behind also looking straight at the camera. I E. Courtney with kind of. Somewhat disapproving or concerned looks on their faces. Maybe it was a stylistic choice they were going for that could have been effective again, if the whole movie had been better, but I found that a little intriguing.

Craig: I didn’t even notice, honestly, really. I don’t know. I can’t say I was really big, super close.

Todd: If there had been, if this had been like slumber party masker and they were all guys, would you have been watching a little more carefully for sure. This was another thing I thought at least one thing that also I give this movie credit. I can’t even believe I’ve now listed like three or four things is that it’s clearly made by women in a sense that they give a lot more to the female gaze and the female perspective than you usually see in these movies.

Then

Craig: some, I mean, yeah, of course Courtney’s visions and fantasies of Matt, he looked he’s good and he’s good looking guy, you know, nice abs and all. You can imagine.

I don’t want to talk about it too much. I’ll get all twitterpated okay. No, here. Right? Well with him. Yeah. But then the other guy, TJ, it’s not like he’s not. Trey. He’s a fit young man and he’s running around with his shirt off, but he’s such a douche bag. Like there’s nothing attractive about him once he starts talking he’s God and his acting is terrible.

Um, there’s a scene where he dances and I don’t even know how a person’s body moves that way. Like, it seemed like he was dancing on the very tips of his toes. And like, you’re going to break your toes. I didn’t know. It was

Todd: weird. Do you realize. Steve and pumpkin head, I

Craig: saw that he was in pumpkin head, but I don’t remember.

Was he the younger brother? The nice one.

Todd: I think he was the deeper, I think he was, yeah. The one who was kind of apologizing, who was the one who

Craig: I think he was. So I guess it’s, you know, it’s a character deal. Cause we liked him in that movie and we felt bad. He was one of the first ones to get killed and he was actually a good dude, but anyway, Uh, goes out to eat except for Courtney and Matt.

And that gives her a birthday cake and then everybody comes back, Courtney in that are making out in her bed. And the rocker killer appears behind Matt, like over like mats, I guess, kind of on top of her. Yeah. So I guess they could be doing it. Yeah. If so they got right to it.

or play every day now. But, uh, so like he’s kind of on top of her. Uh, and, and she sees the killer over his shoulder and she’s like, no, you’re a dream. You’re not real. And then he drills through mats. Beautiful torso. And says, does this look like a dream? Do you,

and this is like you said, the last 20 minutes of the movie where she runs down the stairs, she’s covered in blood. And of course she’s been freaking out this whole time. So it was not like any big surprise that she’s freaking out, but the killer comes down right after her and starts attacking. Yeah.

Todd: Just with abandoned.

Which let’s talk

Craig: about this guitar for a second. It’s enormous. Like it’s comically large. Even the guitar part is just comically large. And then there’s an enormous, I would say good two and a half, three. Drill on the end and it flops around it. It does comically a prop. Yeah. So funny. And I read that the guy, the guy who plays him was only in like three months.

Total, and this is his claim to fame and he was the first guy to audition. The director loved him. She, she was obligated to audition more people, but when they were done, she went right back to this guy. And I guess. So enthusiastic in his portrayal that he broke multiple prompts. And I can only assume that he broke this guitar several times because it’s flopping around.

He’s like banging it on the floor. Like you can see it visibly like bending and moving and flopping around it. I mean, it’s funny. I think, you know, this is a comedy, it is a horror comedy. Um, so I don’t think that they were concerned that this. Weapon looked particularly realistic, but yeah, from this part on these, just chasing people around, uh, he injures TJ right away.

Kill Sally of all of the girls. She was my favorite. So I was kind of sad. She got taken out so quickly, but I knew they all would. I knew everybody would get killed except for Courtney, Terry, Amy, and Courtney planned to make a run for it. And Terry’s car, they do, they leave. But then the rocker pops up in the back seat and says, this is dedicated to the woman.

I love these ones. They

Todd: they’re all like from songs I

Craig: get what they were doing, but every time, like my eyes rolled so far back into my head, I was afraid they would get stuck. They’re like, oh my God. Yeah, it was pretty bad. So, uh, Terry gets drilled. The girls run off, um, In another scene, very reminiscent of the last movie, TJ and his girlfriend.

What’s her name? Juliette. No, Sheila, the actress’s name is Juliet TJ and Sheila run up to a house where there’s lights on and there’s music playing. And they’re banging, banging, banging on the door. But nobody comes. And the, and, and they, uh, TJ ends up getting killed right outside this garage. And then the person comes out and looks around and doesn’t see anything is like, damn kids.

I feel like the exact same thing happened in the first movie. Right.

Todd: Something like that.

Craig: Well, it was two guys in the first movie, but it was the

Todd: same thing, the first movie, and a lot of these movies, right? Like Halloween or wherever we’re all of this may hem is happening at this house, in this suburban area, but nobody else in the surrounding homes and across the street, notice anything that’s going on nor does anybody run out and try to get help from the neighbors, you know, in this case, Yeah, there’s nobody there.

It’s like, there’s one house with the lights on and they’re playing classical music so loud inside that, uh, which I thought was also kind of a gag classical music blasted in this house. And that’s why they can’t hear.

Craig: Yeah. And, and, you know, since everything else is so rock and roll, right. It’s kind of funny, but, um, Courtney calls the cops and if they don’t believe her, because they just think she’s crazy because she seems crazy.

Um, And that’s when the rocker, this is it. I mean, this is just watch this scene on YouTube, really. Like you really don’t need to watch the whole thing. Um, the rocker breaks, the fourth wall looks directly into the camera and says, now it’s time for the fun part. And like these like red and blue, like party lights come on.

And he does a whole. Musical number in the living room. Yes. Sire, hello, musical number in the living room. And then again, this happened in the first movie to one of the survivors, Sheila, um, to Courtney. And I don’t know, the other girl who’s still alive are holed up in a bedroom and they’ve got it barricaded and they hear Sheila.

But they also hear the killers. They don’t want to let her in. And so the killer singing just very slowly, slowly approaches her until he finally gets to her and drills her right outside the door. And then he, and then he drills into the room and th the two girls, uh, it’s Amy and Courtney go out onto the rooftop.

And there’s a whole rooftop chase with. I don’t know. I mean, it wasn’t poorly shot. I enjoyed the angles long. Yeah, there, there, there was, I mean, it was goofy. Crap, but there was some cool, like, um, shots of the rocker killer, just silhouetted, like on a roof, like in a rock and roll PAs position. Yeah. Corny as hell, but it looked good.

Todd: It’s a neat set piece. Like you said, that they’re running around. So then they kind of climb off the roofs and they’re running around in all these homes that are under construction. They’re just stuck basically the basic framework. And I’m sure they filmed the same one, you know, from it all looks the same.

Uh, I mean, honestly, there’s no hiding in that you can see from one end to the other. So it’s a little silly that they’re running through it and pretending to hide, but there’s no real tension here because there’s no rules for this rocker. He can just show up wherever he wants. And so he just does so they can run as much as they do and he’s nowhere to be seen.

And then suddenly they turn and look to their left and there he is, and he makes some quippy one-liner. Ah, drill fires up and he just stands there while they run off somewhere else. And so, you know, when that’s the shtick, like there’s no tension here. And so like the, the scene goes on forever. This is like forever seen it’s long

Craig: and it’s boring.

And yeah, Amy gets slashed with the drill a couple times, but she actually dies because she falls. Um, she, she stumbles and falls and is hanging by a board, like a couple stories up and Courtney tries to pull her up, but she can’t and she falls and she’s dead. And then Courtney is like, Hiding behind a board, like not hiding it all.

And filler is just, just like lounging right behind her, just looking at her. And, uh, she turns around, he says something, I don’t know,

Todd: come on baby light. My fire is

Craig: what he says. Oh my God. So she’s like, okay, I will. And she grabs a blowtorch,

Todd: I guess. Yeah. That happens to be

Craig: there. Yeah. And, and burns him up and he screams and falls off.

And then. It cuts to the next morning and we see, um, you know, Courtney’s fine. She’s still alive. The police are there. There’s lots of people around they’re wheeling, Amy’s body to Anne. I mean, she’s dead. So I’ll know if they’re taking it to an ambulance or whatever. Um, But, uh, Courtney pulls down the sheet and is like stroking Amy’s hair and Amy’s eyes opened up and she starts laughing in the killer’s voice.

But then Courtney wakes up again in her bed, in the condo with me. And so for just a split second, I was thinking, oh, maybe it was a dream, but having seen these types of movies a hundred times, I knew it wouldn’t be. So she, like, she wakes up with Matt and she starts like snuggling him, but then it turns out that.

The rocker again. And she now is in an asylum look, the same set piece that we saw Valerie in before. And the last thing that we see is the giant drill come up through the floor of the asylum. Courtney is screaming and that’s the end

Todd: inception. It’s like dreams within dreams within dreams. You don’t even know what reality is anymore.

It’s really taking us into her mental state

Craig: date, right? Maybe she’s been in the asylum the whole time. Maybe none of

Todd: this ever happened. Maybe her sister didn’t even exist. And in the first,

Craig: maybe the first movie didn’t even happen. Whoa. Born in the asylum? Yes. Maybe she’s the daughter of 10,000 maniacs.

Todd: B we’ll have to watch slumber party massacre three to find out the truth. Can we wait a little

Craig: while?

Uh, I need a break.

Todd: Really enjoy watching this movie. They were parts of it. I enjoyed, I did enjoy actually the musical number just because of how silly it was, but it was very earnestly done. Actually. I don’t think he was too bad. I really think he, he, he did a pretty decent job with what he had to work. I mean considering, and I, again, I want to go back to, I just, I think it’s really interesting, not just by the dream sequences of Matt, you know, talking about this, this movie is quite different from this genre in period, really in that it seems to kind of skip over the male gaze a lot.

And when it does deal with the male gaze, it’s almost a joke, right? It’s like that stupid, silly over the top pillow fight, where you get two boobs and nothing. And I mean, you’ve got women in this movie, you have, um, the woman who played, uh, Amy. Yeah. Was Kimberly MacArthur, the one with the huge boobs, huge boobs.

And I would thought, okay, well, surely she’s going to get nude. And she didn’t, it was in her contract. She was a former Playboy playmate,

Craig: but it was, but it was in her contract. She, yeah. She had done boobs in the last three movies she had done, and she wanted to try to move away from it. I’m just, you know, I I’m M she must have had some clout to get that in her contract, because as we know, you know, the standard of the day was, well, you don’t want to show your boobs.

Well, we’ll find somebody who. Right. Yeah. Maybe her, you know, limited star power as a playmate and having been in several movies. Maybe that was enough to give her a little bit of leverage, I guess. Cause she didn’t take her top off

Todd: is noticeably absent. Even the swimming pool scene and stuff was not gratuitous.

It was like the very, very big opening credits is like going over Courtney’s body while she’s sleeping. And I thought, oh, this is jumping right in with gratuitousness. But actually she’s in the most. Conservative. Yeah. Pajamas. You could imagine. Yeah.

Craig: She’s pretty modestly dressed throughout, but you know, she is.

The final girl and the final girl usually is, you know, but I’d be more Virgin on one, but I see what you’re

Todd: saying. Hi, Roger Corman movie too, you know, like it’s weird enough for Roger Corman movie. We didn’t get more boobs and stuff in here. So, I mean, for that, I think, you know, it’s notable the movie’s called slumber party massacre too.

You get way more massacre than slumber. Out of it. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t, I wouldn’t watch it again. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody. It’s rather silly. Like you said, it’s, it’s not a bad little Halloween movie, perhaps, except for the fact that pretty much nothing happens for the first 50 minutes.

Like yeah.

Craig: You know, I said earlier that I. It could make a good stage production. I think that the reason I say that is just the musical elements of it. I think the musical elements of it would seem a little bit less out of place on stage. Um, but, but even, even just in a, you know, a midnight movie, you know, If in a theater, surrounded by other people who were there for the same reason as you to goof and to have a good time, you know, I’m sure as soon as that guy looked at the camera and said, now it’s time for the fun part and then broke out into song at a midnight screening.

I’m sure people would’ve gone absolutely nuts. And that, that would be fun. Um, but, uh, yeah. Just sitting and watching it in your house, like Ooh…pass.

Todd: All right. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and let us know, just Google us two guys in a chainsaw podcast, and you will find our webpage. You’ll find our Facebook. You’ll find our Twitter, leave us a message. Any one of those places like Ashley did and let us know what movies you would like us to review in the future until that time.

I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This homage to the old DC horror magazines has an interesting premise that is, unfortunately, wasted on a lackluster plot with some truly lousy acting.

Nonetheless, we still enjoyed discussing this Charles Band production, directed by Roger Corman’s long-time special effects wizard, John Carl Buechler. A comic book artists brings a creature to life through her drawings that feeds off of…creativity. Big thanks to Jennifer for requesting this one!

Cellar Dweller (1988)

Episode 265, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig

Todd: This week, we again go to our request bin and randomly pulled out a request from Jennifer for Cellar Dweller. Jennifer, thank you so much for this request. I think has been a while since you requested this so happy to get to it and you know, this is a movie I’d never even heard of before actually.

Um, probably because it’s one of, I don’t know, like a million. Charles band produced horror films. I feel like you could just to have a podcast on this guy’s output alone and it would keep you busy. Oh, for, for forever, pretty much. And they’re kind of recognized sizable too. And to be honest, I mean, uh, they, they all have a similar production value, similar sort of standard and quality for special effects and often use many of the same actors, uh, bouncing around there.

So, um, yeah, cellar dweller. I hadn’t heard of it before. This was my first time seeing it. How about you?

Craig: My first time seeing it. I don’t recall. I mean, it’s a very catchy title, but I don’t, uh, recall ever having heard of it. And nothing was familiar. Um, aside from a couple of the actors, uh, a few of the actors actually.

But no nothing was familiar. And honestly, I was not looking forward to watching this. mark text con our text conversation for this week. When something like this text, you texted me. Okay, should we do Movie A or Cellar Dweller? And I said, well, I watched the first 10 minutes of a movie. So bad. I turned it off, but I’m not really interested in Cellar Dweller either.

And you wrote back. Okay. So Celler Dweller.

Todd: it’s like, I guess in retrospect it sounds a little like a parent giving options to his child. Right? Do you want them, do you want the broccoli or the green beans? I don’t want either. All right. You’re getting broccoli.

Craig: So I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I try not to read spoilers usually in advance, but I do a little bit of research beforehand to see, you know, when it was made, what it’s rated, how long it is, who’s in it, who the director is, who wrote it, that kind of stuff. The director, I didn’t recognize. But then when I went back through his films and he has worked, I think more in.

Special effects, I think. Yes, but he has directed a handful of movies. And one of those is troll, which I love. I love that movie and kind of just looking at images of the monster from this movie, I’m like, okay, See how this, maybe it’s going to be like troll and that’s fun. And it was written, he wrote it under a pseudonym, but it was written by Don Manzini and I liked Don Manzini too.

You know, he, uh, is the guy behind all the Chucky movies. However, many of those movies there are now six or seven, and now there’s going to be a television series with, you know, all Don Nancy and he’s behind it. And the, you know, the actors from the franchisor. On board. And so I liked on me and seen him like, okay, This is going to be all right.

And it’s only an hour and 18 minutes long.

Todd: I thought that was pretty much how I sold it to you. In the beginning, I said, it’s only an hour 18.

Craig: I went into it thinking, all right, this could be okay. And then I started watching it. And the opening scene has Jeffrey Combs in it. Jeffrey Combs is the guy from ReAnimator very recognizable face. I’m like, all right.

Okay. On board. But, uh, I have to say that ultimately, this is one of the worst movies I’ve seen, ever see.

Todd: I would say that after all we’ve been through it, it’s horrible.

Craig: What’s the, the thing that’s the worst about it is the acting, the acting in this movie is some of the worst acting that I’ve ever, ever seen.

Oh, it’s so

Todd: bad. The worst. Oh, come on the worst than which trap and which board?

Craig: Yes. Maybe not. Which trap? Maybe not. Which

Todd: trap God. Oh God, no, not worse than which trap. That’s that’s my gold standard comparable. I didn’t actually think. That bad. I mean, I thought it was, oh my God,

Craig: Todd. It was terrible. The main girl was

Todd: horrible.

Yeah. But it’s kind of on par for these movies. I mean, I, you know, you, you don’t expect a level acting in most of these films and compare maybe just cause I’ve seen which, which trap, which trap is. Unbelievably bad. Let’s like, I don’t want to insult community theater because you and I are both quite heavily involved in the community theater, but that, which trap was like theater acting if I’d ever seen it.

And so I think pretty much any movie that’s even notches above it, I’m like, okay, I’ll give it up. Oh, my God.

Craig: Yeah. Except like one, one of the women in the movies getting killed by this big monster. And she’s just running around her room, like very nonchalantly. And like this thing is chasing her and she goes, oh my God.

Oh dear. Like who says that? So maybe, maybe some of it’s the writing

Todd: too real emotion in this at all right. You don’t ever get a sense that people are ever actually reacting. Convincingly to anything that’s going on around them. You know, I do, I will grant you that like the whole movie is just sort of like it, it’s so simple.

It’s like a simple. Kind of enterprise and it’s short and there’s not much substance there. It’s a cool concept. I think, I mean, I got really on board with the concept from the beginning, just because it tapped into some of my loves, I mean, the opening scene, like you said, with Jeffrey Combs in it. Is a, is a guy who’s drawing a comic and it takes place 30 years ago, 1985.

So that would be 1955. And at this time in history, if you’re a comic book fan, you may know was the time that horror comics were big and booming and none other than William Gaines, the who have, um, behind. A mad magazine, mad magazine. Got it started around this time too. As a comic book published by the same company, ISI comics, entertaining comics.

They put out Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspensStories, and all of these Twilight Zone-type comic books that caused a huge stir and riled up parents and were the subject of the, they had to go in front of Congress and talk about how their comics weren’t causing juvenile delinquency.

There was a, there was a book that came out by a psychologist called seduction of the innocent, and anyway, it kind of forced these comic books off the shelf. Mad magazine did end up surviving and ended up becoming their mainstay in bread and butter and kept them going. The thing is like they were great.

These comics, every single one of them had kind of a twist ending to them. And then of course, you know, Twilight zone came shortly thereafter around the same time tales from the crypt TV series is. And so everybody kind of knows what we’re talking about here, but if you’ve never gone back and. Seeing these comic books and I was obsessed with the reprints.

I think it was in the early nineties, late eighties, maybe, um, a company got ahold of, of all the original artwork and he should reprints of these. So I own so many of them and I go back to them a lot. They’re great artists or artists in here just drawing. Excellent, excellent art. And that’s what this guy’s doing.

He is drawing a horse. In fact, uh, it’s taken from ISI comics directly. The comic he’s drawing is called cellar dweller. It’s the same style. It’s the same, what the covers all looked like. And even in the corner is a little badge. It says east. So, um, I was like, oh, this is awesome. Yeah. And you very quickly understand he’s drawing this comic and as he’s drawing it, he’s referring to this book.

That’s obviously. You know, it’s your standard Necronomicon-type book, ancient book, bounded, leather with strange incantations in it. And he’s using it for inspiration to draw this comic, which is awesome. Kind of demon looking hairy werewolf type figure with a pentagram on his chest, attacking a woman.

Who’s got hat. Most of her clothes ripped off. And as he’s doing this, you see flashes of some of the stuff he’s drawing, actually being there in real life or in our case, we kind of realized that appearing in real life. And so the conceit is that he brings this a monster, this creature to life through his artwork, through his comic book because of.

Curse or whatever that this book, you know, has kind of brought, brought to it. So the things he draws become real. We

Craig: write like he, uh, he draws it and then he like, you know, references this satanic book with the pentagram on the front. And he, like, he opens the book to try to find the dialogue or whatever the.

Word bubble is going to be above the monster or whatever. And he opens it this book, this particular page, and he reads one page and it was it’s something like evil can only exist when man allows it to or something like that. And then on the other page, it says.

Basically the premise is that by giving this demon or whatever it is, Part werewolf part vampire part beast, part ghosts. That’s the crazy thing is everything, everything right? Bye. It form even a two dimensional form. He wills it into existence and that’s exactly what happens. Like the exact scene that he’s drawn of this woman being attacked, manifests directly behind him.

But this is another thing these, you know, I understand that these movies aren’t going for intellectual stuff. I get that. And honestly, I love those comics too. I was a huge fan of tales from the crypt, the HBO series when I was a kid. And I think that this movie would have made an excellent half-hour episode of that show.

Yes, those episodes to be over the top and campy and silly and fun. And I think that if this were condensed into 30 minutes, And you knew that’s what you were getting into. It would be a lot more fun. I think this has just drawn out a little bit. The other thing. What’s hilarious to me is there’s this, you know, satanic book, you know, it’s this great, big, huge leather bound book, but every time anybody opens it, which happens three or four times, they opened to the exact same page and read the exact same words over and over and over again.

Like there are really only two pages.

Todd: It’s more, the bookmark is come on most interesting page. So it’s the only one worth reading. The other stuff is just, you know, recipes for casseroles and stuff. But yeah, you’re right. It’s, it’s hilarious. I mean, there’s a ton of hilarious stuff like this in the movie.

And one thing I want the issue I have with the movie, and by the way, I was prepared to come into this discussion saying exactly what you did as a 31. Tales from the crypt episode, this would have been par for the course as a, at one hour and 18 minutes. It’s it’s, it’s already stretching it beyond that simple premise.

It doesn’t really have anywhere interesting to go. Right. And so that’s the problem, right? Special twist. There’s no, whatever you see what’s happening right in the beginning. And it happens. And it just happens over and over again until the main characters finally find a way to confront it. And a part of it, I think, is the writing the fact that there is no build.

There is nowhere for everybody to go or anything interesting happening, but then. Causes, perhaps the writing the acting to be rather flat because they’ve got nothing really to react to. It’s a very plotty movie. And so, yeah, it’s just, you watch a series of events unfold exactly how you expect them to unfold.

They’re all pretty much the same. Yeah. This guy, you know, eventually, um, his way of destroying the beast is to burn the pages. That was actually really cool. That he’s got these pages in his hand, he likes them on fire and the beast starts to flame up and he stands there. And then he just kind of lowers the pages onto where he’s also had some.

Other pages. And then, um, something spilled like paint thinner or whatever turpentine spilled across the floor and that lights up. And he seems almost nonplus just at the fact that also his entire place is burning up around him. Like there’s no urgency for him to spring up and get the hell out of there.

He just kinda like stares at the floor and the fire around him, the way he was staring at the monster burning up in front of him, you know, and it consumes

Craig: right. And that, you know, that’s, that’s the setup. And then it jumps to 30 years later, after a very long, very low rate, uh, credits over something. Some comic sells.

I mean the comic cells themselves are fine. You know, that’s like, It looks like, you know, I made it on by like 1989. Yeah. Horrible. But another funny thing to me was like, it’s an Inferno. Like he and the, and the beast both die. Inferno and like that’s the pledge. And like actually what the legend ends up being is that he, the artist went mad and cause they found his body in this woman’s body, the woman that had been killed by the monster, um, they find him in the woman’s body.

So they think that he went mad and that he killed her. Which of course we don’t know, but, um, Later on, not much later on characters, go down into the basement. I think burned up burned.

Todd: It’s hilarious. It was a mystical fire,

Craig: a mystical fire or everything in that basement was made of like as Bestos or something.

Todd: Oh, maybe that’s why they’re forbidden from going down. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it’s more about as best as a basement, any curse.

Craig: Okay. So our main character is Whitney, uh, played by Debra Ferrand, Tino.

I didn’t look her up. Was she in anything notable? She

Todd: looked familiar. She’s in a lot of television actually.

Craig: Yeah, very pretty. She’s got big eighties hair and parts of the movie, but, um, but like your mom’s big eighties hair,

not like Linnea Quigley, big eighties here. Yeah. What’d he say about my mom? Huh? My, well, I find mine. Big eighties hair. And you know, of course you’ve got the concede of the taxi driver, like warning her, like, oh, there’s been lots of stories about this place, murders and weirdos and blah, blah, blah. But you know, she’s not deterred, it’s now the Throckmorton Institute for the arts and it’s like a commune of artists.

And though it was a very clear day on the taxi ride. As soon as she gets out of the car. It’s dark and storming. And she goes inside and meets the, what would you call her? The leader, I guess, of

Todd: this place is apparently a board of directors, which we never see, but, uh, she would be, I guess, the director of the, of the enterprise.

Beholden to the board,

Craig: right? Mrs. Briggs. And I liked her, but I didn’t look up her picture on IMD. Her IMDP profile is old Hollywood and she’s stunning Lee gorgeous here. She’s an older woman and, and you know, a little like heavier as we all get when we’re

Todd: older. Hilarious Craig. Oh, she’s you Vonda Carlo.

And she was Lily Munster on the Munsters. I

Craig: know I’m saying I looked her up after I, then I was like, oh, okay. I love her.

Todd: I love her. After all

Craig: the monsters, when I was a kid, I thought that was the group. I just thought that was the greatest

Todd: show. And she’s been in a thousand things too, by the way. She has a filmography.

That’s insane. She

Craig: has a very strong presence, even in her later years. And she, she did other stuff in her later years, too. She was in American Gothic, which I’ve actually never seen, but I was always intrigued by the cover. But anyway, she, uh, greets with. It’s apparent from the beginning that she doesn’t like her.

And she’s pretty outwardly insulting and tells her that she thinks that what would need does Whitney is also a comic book, artist, and illustrator Whitney tells her that she’s a huge fan of cellar dweller, and that she wants to make a new comic inspired by it. But, uh, Mrs. Briggs isn’t impressed at all.

And, and she takes her. This was so weird to me. She takes her around the house and she’s like, oh, this door will be of interest to you. This is the door to the seller where your hero, you know, did his work and killed people or whatever. She’s like, but it’s totally off limits. And then, and then this is Briggs walks away and Whitney immediately goes down there.

Todd: Well, she imagines going down there. Yeah.

Craig: But I was really confused cause she goes down there and like everything’s clean and stark white and they’re like marble statues and stuff. And there’s like a woman tied to a table and then there’s like a zombie ax murder. And I was like, what is happening?

Todd: It’s weird.

Right. That didn’t make any sense. That was a total non-sequitur. I mean, it was supposed to be some, I guess, just a vivid mixture of images from, you know, the incident that had happened before. It’s like the same girl with her St where they’re torn off clothes, but then the zombie ax murderer kind of comes from.

Nothing.

Craig: Well, I wondered like he’s dressed like Jeffrey Combs was in the first scene, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Jeffrey Gomez.

Todd: And, and why would he be a zombie ax murderer at this point? But it did get us our quote of at least four boobs within like the first 10 minutes. So I think that was more the purpose

Craig: of that scene.

Terribly stimulating though. I have to say like, uh, Yeah, those are boobs.

Todd: That’s a little budget film. You got to, you get what you pay for.

Craig: It’s true. Then she meet. Okay. So then she continues to follow Mrs. Briggs and they meet, um, some more people who live there. They walk into the kitchen and Lisa played by Miranda Wilson, who all again, did lots and lots of TV.

So days of our lives, I think is where she got her start. Lots of soaps and lots of TV. She’s sprawled out seductively on the kitchen table. And I was like, what? Why? Like sit in a chair that is disgusting. That’s where you eat. Like, cause she, I don’t, she wasn’t like in her underwear, but she was like in a negligee or something.

Todd: She was like mixing something up in a bowl. I don’t know what

Craig: she was doing, like oatmeal or something. She appeared he is a performance artist. And then Phillip is sitting at the table and I kind of maybe got the impression that maybe Lisa was on the table because maybe she was modeling for him, even though Phillip does abstracts.

Now, Phillip is played by Brian Robbins. Who, if you watched any television at all in the eighties, you will completely recognize he was on every 86. Every single one, he was on it,

Todd: guest character who came in and maybe the very special episode, you know, uncle bill who was an alcoholic or something comes in that kind of,

Craig: well, he was like a teenager.

So he was always, you know, the love interest for the teenage girl and like one episode or he would do it three episode arc, but he’s super recognizable. Now. He’s a huge executive, like his resume. Like he, uh, Produced so many things. Um, he’s the president of like children’s entertainment for one of the biggest conglomerates in Hollywood, like hugely, hugely successful at this point, apparently, but he paints abstracts and he’s immediately enamored with Whitney and Mrs.

Briggs shows Whitney to her room, I guess, or her studio or something. And I thought. Just out of the corner of my eye, looked over Whitney’s shoulder and there was the poster for ReAnimator, which I thought was hilarious.

Todd: It

Craig: was, and as it turns out, there’s imagery from several movies. Yeah. Randomly on the wall.

Like I miss it. I didn’t see it, but apparently the troll poster is there somewhere I’m almost positive. I saw the image from the cover art of dolls with the doll, with no eyes like holding your own eyeballs. No. There are several throughout which for a horror fan. Again, if this were an episode of tales from the crypt, it would be a great episode, but it just feels so padded.

Like there, there are too many characters, um, and, and they’re obviously there so that they can be killed later.

Todd: Trying to be really funny because it presents these artists all. So, so you mentioned, um, Philip, you, you mentioned Lisa. I think there’s another guy we’ll meet later called Norman and another woman named Amanda.

And it’s just, it’s making. Artists, you know, Phillip comes in to, while she’s immediately, Whitney’s Amelie, I’ve gotten to work drawing in her studio. And Phillip is immediately in there chatting her up and invites her to come upstairs because they’re going to have a, his gallery critique, which they do every week or something like that.

So they go to critique Phillips art, which looks like it was drawn by a child. It’s like, it’s like painting finger painting stuff. And I mean, I appreciated this comedy aspect of it, of portraying these artists, how. To be honest. We often see these kinds of artists and clave type things where everybody’s, you know, patting each other on the back and doing, trying to out weird each other and got all these kind of quirky personalities.

And, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like a quirkiness one-upmanship, you know, stereotype.

Craig: It’s funny in concept. I just thought it fell super flat.

Todd: It did because they get there and they’re looking at the art and Mrs. Briggs is, says something serious about this silly painting, and then suddenly a guy Springs out and his name is Norman and he’s got a gun and he grabs Lisa.

And to give me that art or I’ll shoot her. And I don’t think I won’t. And, and Whitney’s.

Turns out. This is just Norman. He does this sort of, role-play acting things out because he’s a writer and he’s writing some the next Raymond Chandler inspired kind of gumshoe story. So

Craig: former private investigator. Turned like crime writer, detective story writer. And I guess when, when he gets a writer’s block, he acts out scenes to try to inspire himself and everybody else just goes along with it.

Todd: And it’s so half-baked because this Norman character, I mean, you think, oh, private investigator, is he going to be, you know, Bringing those skills into play in the actual plot of the movie later, he’s typing things up in his little office, which I thought was so good. Oh

my

Craig: God. Honestly, like an old time-y typewriter and he’s got a bottle of whiskey next to him and he’s smoking a cigar and it’s like, voiceover of just totally that, you know, cheesy.

Crime novel, detective novel narration. That part did make me smile just because it was so stereotypical and so silly and so intentional. And I did think it was funny to look at for a second. Yeah,

Todd: everything’s kind of half-baked right. It’s like, oh, these are kind of funny, cute concepts, but either they’re poorly executed or they just they’re there and then they’re gone.

Because, um, it turns out there’s another woman there named Amanda and she’s doing video projects, video verite type, slice of life type stuff. I guess it’s, that’s really silly, but she meets up with Whitney and they’ve known each other before. Apparently they were freshmen in art school first year art school or whatever.

And Amanda was known for stealing other people’s art and concepts and ideas and stuff and apparent. Did one over on Whitney at some point. So they’re not very friendly to each other from the get go. So there’s that tension, which Norman overhears and he overdosed here’s it. And he’s writing it in his little tech, in his little notebook as he’s kind of creeps around and takes notes on things.

And so I thought, you know, he would be a kind of a pivotal integral S the guy who’s kind of the brains who kind of pops in and tries to figure out the mystery of what’s going on when things are start going on. But he just kind of does a little. And then he dies. So, you know, again, it just, it just feels like not very well fleshed out all of these ideas.

And of course it’s just a hodgepodge, you know, it’s a crazy silly hodgepodge of things that don’t really go anywhere. Interesting. And aren’t even, even that well

Craig: executed. Right, right there it’s th there are no stakes, like it’s just a lineup of goofy characters who, you know, are just being lined up to be killed.

And eventually they are. And not in particularly interesting ways, Whitney dreams of the beast, it’s all just flashback stuff from the first scene that we saw, but she dreams of it. And she wakes up to hear this constant screaming. And she looks around the house, looks towards the seller. The screaming is not coming from there.

Um, she finally goes outside and Lisa is just standing, screaming her head off. And when she hears Whitney behind her, she turns around and she’s like, oh, sorry, did I wake you? Yeah, you did. You were screaming in the middle of the night. Like, what did you think was good? And she’s like, oh, I just do this to release my creative imagery or something like, okay.

In the middle of the night,

Todd: like, oh, and all the others they’re so used to it, they just sleep right through it. Sorry to wake you

Craig: up. So, um, and then they, you know, they have kind of like, uh, uh, we’re friends now talk and they’re weird sounds from the cellar and Lisa jokes that it’s the ghost. Child risks, the comic writer or whatever, but after, you know, Lisa kisses or good night on the cheek or whatever, Whitney goes down into the cellar, um, and gets scared by Phillip and then opens this trunk, which we had actually seen that child Reese’s satanic book had fallen into the trunk and the trunk had fallen shut and all of the commotion before the

Todd: good thing, it didn’t get burned up and that somebody had the foresight to.

I guess after that incident with a potluck,

Craig: it doesn’t even matter because seriously, nothing is burned. Yeah,

Todd: exactly. Even his wooden drawing table is still there with papers

Craig: on it. Yeah. Comic books on the shelves and stuff. Nothing. Nothing is burning. Uh, the satanic book and she’s all excited. And so the next morning she convinces Mrs.

Briggs Slutter work in the cellar, you know, Briggs doesn’t like her anyway, but she’s like, well, you know, if you let nobody else is using the seller, and if you let me go down there, it’ll open up another spot and then you can bring in another real artist. Mrs. Briggs is like, okay, whatever. Um, so then there’s a cleaning montage.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it

Todd: before. It was a lame cleaning. Montage consisted entirely. Of hands dusting things.

Craig: Yeah. And my favorite was that it ended on a very lingering shot of presumably Whitney’s hand dusting off this marble statue and lingering over its tiny penis. Like what is,

Todd: what, why? I think they’re just attempts at humor throughout.

Attempts.

Uh, well, but then, you know, after she decides to let her go down there, she has got it in for Whitney for some reason. So she calls an Amanda and says, Amanda, I have a little project for you. And so while Whitney is down there drawing, Amanda is up outside one of the basement windows filming. With her video, obviously

Craig: like

Todd: right.

You know, opens the book and decides she’s going to use this book to draw a monster. And a, this book is so great. And, and so I’m going to use it as inspiration to draw, like the best monster in the whole world. Phillip is on board with it and all that she writes, she draws it all down.

Craig: She’s clearly never seen.

You know, people in horror movies have clearly never seen horror movies because, you know, she draws this BS, then she draws a big pentagram on his chest. And then she takes these like runes, like, or some old ancient language that she has no idea what it says and uses that as it’s thought or word bubble.

Um, so, you know, we’ll just, you know, it’s like, You know, group of teenagers or 20 somethings who goes to a cabin in the woods and finds this satanic book and thinks, you know what we act, we should read this aloud. Yeah.

Same day. And so the beast man, The high term, but something that we, uh, didn’t mention before is apparently the, you know, the beast, because I guess it’s part ghost. Uh, it can also just appear and disappear at will. Right? So she doesn’t realize that she’s brought this thing into reality. I

Todd: think the beast appears.

Another kill and then disappears for a lot of boring talking and then reappears for another boring kill. I mean, that’s really how it goes. Unleashing the beast in this instance is more just like unleashing a nuisance. It’s like a cockroach. You can’t get out of your house. Like it it’s quiet for a real long while and then suddenly see it scurry across the floor.

And then it’s gone again for awhile, you know?

Craig: Let’s talk about the beast for a second, because honestly, I, I don’t hate the way it looks when it’s not moving or talking because

in English. Okay. So when it’s not moving or talking, I don’t mind the way it looks. It is very reminiscent of the creature effects.

Todd: Oh, yeah. I mean the same guy worked on, um, the, the director of this movie who, who you mentioned, came up through special effects, but basically Roger, he was Roger Corman’s guy, the head of his special effects division for years.

This was his very first directing project. And he claims he was the first person. To make the jump from special effects to the director’s chair. Uh, I don’t know about that, but that’s what you can see on his IMDP

Craig: page. So it looks okay. It really looks okay. It’s obviously a guy in a suit, which, you know, cool.

That’s fine. I don’t know if it was limitations of the suit, but it barely moves. Like it pretty much just stands there. It has some movement in its face, but not a whole lot. And so it’ll stay in there. It might take a couple of steps towards somebody to kill them. I got, honestly, I barely even remember the way that it kills people.

Like I think it just grabs them and rips them apart.

Todd: It’s a lot of closeup shots is what it is and, and hands when you don’t see the rest of the creature, uh, it, it really is the movie that, you know, it relies on closeups and it’s trying really hard to give you a good, special effects beast. So it lingers on, you know, shots of his face and shuts.

Chomping down on arms and legs and spitting out blood and swallowing eyeballs and things, but it’s still just that one shot, right? You don’t very often get a full body shot of him and you certainly don’t get much

Craig: movement every time. Like he rips the bodies apart and you see kind of very quick close-ups of like limbs being torn apart.

And then afterwards it always eats them. And then like you said, it’s super close up. Of this thing’s mouth all covered in blood, like munching and crunching. And it’s the same every time to the point where I kind of suspect that they just used the same footage for every kill or, or, or, or they shot five minutes of this footage and then just.

Cut it up and used it for every kill because it looks exactly the same.

Todd: Yeah. I think you’re right. Same lighting setup, same, everything, nothing really in the background. It’s just all about the creature and can kind of mostly in, you know, half darkness, you know, it reminded me a little bit, the look of the creature reminded me a little bit of if you took that little goblin then Jeannie or whatever, from sorority babes in the slimeball bowl, aroma, and just made them a little bigger and put a bunch of hair on them.

That’s kind of how he looked and

Craig: moved. I guess let’s see Whitney, uh, confronts Amanda about being Snoopy and, and again, Norman overhears this, so he knows there’s tension between them. And then Amanda sneaks down into the basement, finds a copy of cellar dweller. One of those other horror comics takes it.

And then in Whitney style, Recreates it and signed Whitney’s name to it. And she’s setting her up. She makes this video where she accuses the, apparently she’s going to give to the board of directors or whatever that accuses Whitney of plagiarizing. Um, whatever. I mean, Amanda’s just a bitch. Like that’s the only characteristic that she has.

She’s a conniving bitch. Yeah. Meanwhile, Whitney is down in the cellar and she draw. Amanda being attacked and it happens exactly as she’s drawing it down to environmental changes. Like Whitney draw. Uh, a cell that shows Amanda going to reach for the door, but there’s no door, no door knob. And in, we see in the scene, Amanda reaches for the door and the door knob disappears complete with like a loop sound effects.

Todd: Little animated over it. Yeah.

Craig: Uh, it’s very, very silly. And that’s when she’s getting attacked. Oh my God. Oh dear. And Whitney draws her saying won’t anybody help me. And so she says it pretty much just like that.

It’s all horrible acting. The effects are exactly as we just described. And when Whitney’s done drawing it, the last cell is the monster who says out loud, who’s next. And so we hear the monsters say that.

Todd: Kind of set everything in motion and from here on out the monster pops in and kills people one by one. And at this time it’s like the pages of the comic book manifest themselves. Yes. And so I feel like it again, it’s kind of a cool concept. I liked it. I liked it. Let’s put it that way. And it was interesting then how it allows them to, uh, either be stylistic or save a lot of money, whichever you prefer to choose so that these kill scenes, intersperse bits of the cell that are showing what’s happening or what is about to happen with what, you know, the actual what’s going on.

And I actually thought that was good because some of these would show what was about to happen. And so there was some anticipation there that, that. Was pretty clever. Yes, I agree. And the artworks pretty good too. So that’s the conceit and we just see that happen like three or four more times.

Craig: Norman is like, you know, investigate.

Cause Amanda’s missing. Mrs. Briggs is worried. Nobody else cares. Cause they hate her anyway. But uh, Norman investigates and he thinks that Whitney killed Amanda because for revenge or something, but then he doesn’t get to share that theory with anybody because he immediately. Killed. Yeah. And I don’t, I don’t even remember it.

Like

Todd: he gets into the he’s in his investigation and Amanda’s missing. So he goes into Amanda’s room and he plays that videotape that she made. And there’s a part of the videotape where she’s talking directly into the camera saying, oh, Whitney’s plagiarizing. This is proof, yada, yada, yada, while the monster is rising up behind her and attacks her.

So her attack is caught on camera and that’s what he sees at the same time. The monster is also rising behind him and he turns around and he gets it. So, oh, he gets his head knocked right off. Oh, that’s

Craig: right. That was kind of fun. I forgot

Todd: about, yeah, flies across the room. Way, way. It’s the corner and a couple of walls.

I liked that bit. And then Lisa takes a shower.

Craig: Well, wait. Oh, because I jumped to Norman’s death. I wanted to at least mention performance. Oh, that was one. I want to say unintentional, but I don’t even believe that to be true. I believe that this was. Completely 100% played for comedy. Cause she’s a performance artist.

And so like she has her face made up like Ziggy Stardust kind of, and she’s in a leotard and tights and like maybe like a Tutu or something and she’s dancing around and she just keeps. Yeah, she’s got dolls hung up on the wall that are labeled with the names of the people in the house and a balloon above each dollar.

And she’ll like pop the balloon and take the doll down and dance around it. Death is sad and then she’ll roll around on the ground and it’s so. Dumb it’s so, so dumb, but that part actually really amused me because I didn’t major, but I studied theater in college and I didn’t take it. But Alan did a, uh, there was a performance art class and they would have a showcase at the end of every semester.

And it would be literally this type of shit.

Todd: This is funny. Cause it’s true. Yeah. This is not a lie.

Craig: Really honest to God stuff. Just like this, like people going around and like blowing out candles or like my. This was one of my friends. I hope she never listens to this. I don’t think that she will, but one of my friends just sat on a couch and ate a bologna sandwich.

Like that was her performance.

Oh boy. So that was fun. Um, but then things like somehow Whitney and at this point, Philip is just kind of her little lap dog, and it’s all very goofy, but, um, she opens the book to the only page that you can open this book to right in the middle of it and reads, um, the same thing that we’ve seen before.

So. Figures out, I guess that the curse is real, pretty

Todd: big leap. Yeah, but she D well, don’t, don’t, don’t they see, she sees, um, papers materialize also

Craig: of Lisa’s death. Right. And, and it’s happening. At the same time, like, like it’s the, the movie is cutting back and forth between Whitney coming to these realizations and seeing it appear on the page and Lisa and we actually see what’s happening to Lisa.

And again, you know, of course, you know, put this young blonde pretty girl in the shower for no reason. And then just have her like, oh no, my towel is missing. So I guess I’m just going to have to run around.

Todd: Are you playing around with me again? I’m coming out

Craig: there so silly and, and they, they know that it’s happening, but they’re too late.

I mean, they, they get to her door as we see her being torn apart. In the exact same way that we’ve seen everybody else. Yeah.

Todd: And so then they kind of like runaway, they seen the monster, it kind of chases them slightly. And then the next shot is they’re sitting in Mrs. Briggs office worried. And they’re like, look, we’re telling you, there’s a monster here.

W w what, what, what happened between suddenly you guys calmly sitting in her office, two doors down from where this woman was brutally slaughtered and you saw this giant

Craig: monster. I feel like they immediately run to the, um, seller again, and Whitney is kind of hysterical, but her acting is so bad. Like it just looks totally fake.

Meanwhile, Phillip is completely unfazed. Like he’s still like cracking jokes. Yeah, exactly. And then Whitney, like, I don’t know where this comes from, but, uh, I guess, because they’re all artists, she deduces. Monster feeds on creative energy. So like quite literally, it’s eating these artists and feeding on their energy.

Okay.

And they’re looking, they’re looking at the illustrations and the monster, and they’re again, very reminiscent of troll. Like these weird lighting effects that look like they were done in post. Like they’re like illustrated in these green lights. Floating around and the Monster’s hand burst out through the paper and it grabs Phillip and Whitney is knocked to the floor and knocked unconscious, which happens in movies all the time.

I’ve never seen any, I’ve never in my real life, just seen anybody, you know, barely fall down and be completely unconscious, but whatever. Um, but when she wakes up. When, when he wakes up, Phillip has just gone. And so she goes to Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Briggs is kind of strangely calm about the whole thing too.

Um, and then I don’t even understand what happens here. Like Mrs. Briggs walks behind her, like to get her some tea or something, and she’s like, it’s okay, dear. I’ve been going through some changes too. And when Whitney turns around, Mrs. Briggs is turning into the monster. I was confused. I mean, I think that this was just the way that Mrs.

Briggs dies, I guess like the monster just takes her over, but in the moment I’m like, was she always the

Todd: monster? Oh, interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think the problem is there’s no real rules for this, right? It’s kind of hard. It’s it’s, there’s no real consistency, no pattern to follow the monster just can reappear and manifest itself anywhere it wants, but it chooses.

To wait a while in between each time. So, you know, it just, it,

Craig: yeah. To my favorite part of this movie, the credits, yes. The monster drags Whitney to the basement and pages keep appearing and she’s like, you know, throwing things at it. A good 30 seconds a minute. And eventually she throws a little bottle and it spills on the page and the monster is hurt.

And so she looks to see what it was that she threw and is now running down the page. And it’s fucking white out. That is how you defeat this monster with.

Todd: That was great. So she just grabbed, grabs a big bottle. It just dumps it all over the page and you know, shouldn’t that fix it all. I don’t know. I don’t understand why that didn’t end it. Well, she should just

Craig: be done, but instead she dramatically. Oh, I’m so sorry. Like no tears, like just the fake it. Crying, you can ever imagine.

Meanwhile, the monster is gone, she’s defeated, but the way that, you know, she has an idea, like a light bulb goes on in her head and she draws a page in which. Phillip is the hero and feeds the monster and gets the monster chained up to the wall. She does it and she’s done and she looks at it and she’s waiting for something to happen and nothing happens.

And she’s like, oh, fill up my answer. And she like kisses her fingers and like puts it on his face, on the page. And from behind her, she hears that’s it. I want a real kiss.

here comes Philip, all smiles with the monster, chained up again, behind him behind the wall. And I’m like, you stupid bitch. Like got rid of the monster. And then you immediately brought it back. I

Todd: drew it again, like, couldn’t you just draw Philip leaping out of the page and then we’re done.

Craig: Right. So she draws everybody back.

It’s just a scene. There’s not even any dialogue or anything of just all of these, everybody who’s died, except they’re just sitting on the couch, like having tea, like high tea, like they’re all. I know.

Todd: And then Whitney and Philip peek around the corner, just to see that they’re there and then look at each other and wink and smile, and then go back around the corner.

It looks so goofy. It’s like, oh, we got to get this scene in. They see it. Okay. They go downstairs, but the monster is still there. Right? Yeah. And why doesn’t she just wipe them out again?

Craig: Well, she’s like the way that child wrists defeated him was by burning him up. So that’s what I’m up to. And she tells Philip to grab a waste basket of metal waste basket, and he does, and she crumbles up all the pages and throws them in and starts burning them.

And it works, the monster catches on fire, but then. As we are seeing things burn in the, uh, trashcan, all of a sudden it’s the picture of Philip and it starts to burn and she’s like, oh no. And she, she looks at him and he burst into flames and starts screaming. And then we see all the other people upstairs.

We see their pictures start to burn and they start screaming too. And it almost seemed implied to me that it wasn’t maybe even really them, that she brought back because as they’re burning, they kind of look like the monster or like monster is like the monster. Anyway, it ultimately doesn’t matter because they just all burn up and up is the last one.

To burn up and she turns around and sees on display a big drawing of the beast with the thought bubble over its head that it speaks aloud. I mean, the beast isn’t there anymore, but we hear the voiceover read wherever there is imagination. I will do well. And then the monster is not that, and it attacks Whitney and we just hear her scream.

Todd: Two credits.

Well, I will say that I expect I wasn’t expecting it, but I thought again, the movie is very inconsistent in the way it portrays itself. There’s not a continuity to how all this seems to operate, but, um, when she was throwing all the pages in there and burning them up to kill the monster, I was going through my head, wait a minute.

If that destroys the monster, wouldn’t it also destroy the people. And so when the people got destroyed, I was like, oh wow, that’s actually kind of cool. And then at the end it just ended up hokey. But as a 30 minute, this would be very typical though, for like a tail. So the crypt kind of episode. And so, oh, absolutely.

As you said earlier, if this movie had been 30 minutes instead of an hour and 18, it probably would have gone down better. I mean, still wouldn’t have helped the acting or anything, but the fact that they sorta had to stretch it out, made a lot of it, very nonsensical and forced them to really fill it up with a bunch of skills.

Craig: Yeah. And, and tales, you know, tales from the crypt. You know, of course there are also the movie anthologies based on these comics, um, tales from the dark side creep show. And I really liked those too, but I loved, um, tales from the crypt, especially because it was very tongue in cheek. It, you know, it was constantly winking at you as the.

Um, and I liked that and I think that this would have, you know, I would have enjoyed this as an episode of that show because I would expect this kind of hammy acting in this hammy storytelling. And I don’t even want to say that this movie takes itself too seriously. It doesn’t, it’s just. It it’s just that, uh, it it’s almost like it just tried too hard.

It, it should have been a half hour, you know, they, they could have kept Mrs. Briggs that would have been fine. They could have kept the, they could’ve kept the nemesis, you know, as fodder for the monster, they would’ve kept the, the love interest possibly, but they easily could’ve cut the gum shoe guy. They easily could’ve cut.

Lisa, even though I liked her fine, but she. Unnecessary, trim it down, get it to a nice, solid 30 minutes. Give it this, you know, grim ending, which tales from the crypt always did as far as I can remember. And, uh, I think I would have liked it now as, as bad as I thought it was. I didn’t walk away from it angry.

We have watched some movies that I thought were so bad that I walked away from them piss. Like, I can’t believe I watched that it was horrible. It was a waste of my time. I didn’t walk away from this angry. I just walked away from it thinking it was that. And that being said, I kind of expected that we would have fun talking about it and I did have fun talking about it.

So yeah. Thank you to all of you who send in requests. We’ve been getting a lot of requests lately, and Todd is usually the one who responds to private messages that we get. And, uh, your go-to responses. Thank you so much. Uh, we’ll get it on the requests. And we really do. We keep a request list and, and, but it’s long.

So if you request something, don’t think that we’re ignoring you. It may just take us a while to get there because we’ve had so many requests, but keep them coming because this is the kind of thing we wouldn’t choose. No, we never would have chosen this. I never would have watched this. I thought it was a stupid movie, but it w for the podcast, you know, it’s fun to talk about.

Todd: And I mean, again, I mean, we’ve seen, like you said, much stupider movies and I just kind of shrugged. Again, it was a, it kind of was what it was. We’ve seen movies like this. This is exactly the kind of thing I would have seen on USA up all night, you know, and probably would have felt better with a few commercials, padding it out, honestly, to break up, break it up, come back to it.

Kind of forget how silly the previous scene was. You know? No, I didn’t, I don’t feel, I didn’t react quite as strongly as you, as far as I wouldn’t at all call it the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen or the worst acting I’ve ever seen. I just thought it was a. Kind of mediocre all around. Interesting premise, the premise deserved more, but once again, if you had trimmed, it just, like you said to a 30 minute thing, it would have been even more in spirit in keeping with the spirit in which I believe it was made as an homage to these kinds.

Of, uh, of stories. Yeah. I got a tip, a little bit of my hat to that one as well, because we also see a lot of very uncreative or films to some guys in different locations, you know, hacking people apart, random weirdos or, or random silliness. And this, uh, this, this had a theme that I thought at least had a little bit of heart behind it, even if it wasn’t executed as well.

Uh, so I did, I did. Well, thanks again for listening. As Craig said, if you have a request or you just want to tell us what you thought of this film, please just look us up. Two guys, and a chainsaw podcast. You can just Google that. You’ll find our Facebook page. You’ll find our website and you’ll find our Twitter feed.

Send us a request. We will add it to the list and hopefully get around to it. Soon. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and also check us out on YouTube. If that’s your bag, we have a YouTube channel there as well until next time. I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This 2018 Netflix film has a pedigree that stretches back to The Woman, The Witch, The Wicker Man, and a lot of other “The” movies that deal with religious cults in old-timey settings. It’s a brutal film, but full of raw emotion and just edge-of-your-seat mystery that made us forget completely that it’s over 2 hours long. Check it out!

Apostle (2018)

Episode 264, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week’s episode is Apostle, the 2018 Netflix film by writer/director, Gareth Evans, who is Welsh, who cut his teeth in Indonesia. On several Indonesian horror films, including a segment from VHS 2 called Safe Haven that I think was one of the better of the segments there, which also sort of feels like he’s auditioning for this movie.

He seems to be a guy along with a little stable of filmmakers who moved to Indonesia as a filmmaker and did some movies down there made some pretty good ones. Apparently that I haven’t seen one called the Ray. Yeah. A whole

Craig: series. I think there’s two or three

Todd: of them, I think. Yeah. Yeah. At least two. And after hearing about it, and I kind of want to see that movie.

It’s not a horror movie. It’s, it’s an action movie, but it gets it’s very well regarded apparently. I’ve not seen many Indonesian films. I’m not sure I have seen any. So, but anyway, that, that bit Safe Haven from VHS 2 was one of the standouts I think, and that was in Indonesia. He decided that he wanted to dip his toes back in the horror genre a little bit, started playing with some ideas that he had had.

With a couple of the writer directors, I think, and came up with this movie, Apostle, which pretty strongly hearkens back to like The Wicker Wan and those types of films, but definitely has its own spin on things. And I was not my idea to choose this film. It was Craigslist. So Craig, what made you decide to choose a parcel for us to talk about this

Craig: week?

I feel like the last few movies that we’ve done and I don’t know that may be an exaggeration, but we we’ve, we’ve done a couple silly. Movies, bad movies, not meaning that we didn’t like them. We didn’t enjoy talking about them, but just that we’re, you know, kind of goofy and that’s great. And, and last week after we did leprechaun, you said, should we do something good now?

That’s true. And I thought, you know what? It feels like. Then a little while since we’ve done something that was really good. I really enjoy lists. Um, I, you know, follow these horror movie websites. And so I just started Googling like best horror movies of 20, 21 best horror movies of 2020. Uh, cause I, I also like to do recent things every once in awhile and I ended up on.

A list that was scariest movies available on Netflix. And it was a fun list to go through. Uh, I haven’t really been looking at Netflix a lot lately because I’ve got so many other streaming services now where he usually go to. My horror fix. Um, and as I remembered Netflix, hasn’t always been the best when it comes to horror selection.

But looking at this list, there were actually quite a few on there that, uh, I thought were pretty interesting. But for some reason, this one stood out. I don’t remember why, but I texted you and said, let’s, let’s check this out. And then. It was only then that I went to the IMDV page and saw that it was two hours and 10 minutes long.

Todd: I know I was so shocked when you chose this. The minute I looked at the time, I was like, oh my God, Craig must really want to see this movie.

Craig: No, it was, it was kind of a surprise to me, but we picked it some, sometimes we pick these movies a day or two before we’re going to record. Um, but we actually pick this one pretty early and I thought, well, it’s all right.

You know, it’s a long, but if I want to, I can break it up over several days. But, um, I didn’t, I started watching it and, uh, I was really pretty intrigued and I ended up watching it from start to finish all in one, sitting. It is long and there’s no getting away from that, but I was not bored. This is a very.

Plot driven movie. Um, there’s always stuff going on. Um, new twists and intriguing things happening all the time. You’re right. That it is a lot like The Wicker Man a lot, because it’s about a guy I going into this cult, basically the main character Thomas played by Dan Stevens, who I recognize. Probably just cause he’s hot, but I recognized him and I looked him up and he was the lead in The Guest, which we did a few Halloweens ago and we liked that movie and we liked him in it talked

Todd: about how hot he was in that movie almost too hot, really?

Like, like he’s like a CGI person. He looks so good, but like that movie. Somehow has become our most downloaded. One of our most downloaded episodes. We’ve done over 260 episodes now. And I don’t even understand why the guest, I can’t say at this moment. All right, I’m not going to, I’m not, I’m not going to go back and look at the statistics at this moment, but for the longest time, our S ever since our episode on that came out, that was our most downloaded episode.

And then when I started putting our episodes up on YouTube, That also skyrocketed immediately to be one of our most viewed episodes.

Craig: It’s funny because when we did that movie, I had never even heard of it.

Todd: Yeah, me neither or Dan Stevens to be fair, but, but now. If you’ve seen the Disney beauty and the beast, he was the beast.

It was quite good. I actually enjoyed that one. Somebody else had to tell me he was a long standing person on Downton Abbey. I don’t watch that show. He also, I think, was a little heavier in that role. He didn’t look like so pretty boy that he does now, but in this movie, he, it looks quite good. I mean, his eyes are just piercing.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It dirty them up a little bit. Right. And it it’s, it’s a period piece and he does look, you know, rugged

because it’s a period piece. In addition now, There are definitely shades of Wicker Man here, for sure. But because it’s a period piece, it reminded me of some other things, a little bit of The Witch vibe. Oh yeah. Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of, uh, The Crucible, The Village. Yeah. And, and even The Wailing was not a period piece, but I feel like it was far enough removed culturally from what I’m accustomed to that it almost felt period, just because it felt kind of foreign to me and, and dealing with supernatural stuff and not necessarily really familiar traditional. Supernatural stuff. This movie is, uh, original in, you know, what it’s, what it’s dealing with.

Uh, and, and I liked that, um, yes, it is a cult, but it’s not a Satanist cult. There’s, there’s something entirely different. And I found it to be pretty unique, uh, going on. So overall, I I’m glad that, uh, We stumbled across it because I don’t know that I would have watched it otherwise. And there’s some really good stuff going on here.

I think first and foremost, I would say that the quality of the filmmaking, oh, it’s, top-notch like insane. Like this cinematography is beautiful. Um, the set pieces are large scale and realistic looking for the most part. There’s a lot, you know, shot in these great natural landscapes. You know, there are some silly anachronism, some silly mistakes that are made as far as the time period is concerned, but they’re few and far between.

And for the most part, it feels. Uh, pretty authentic and, and yeah, I don’t know. It it’s, it’s a hard movie to qualify. I did like it, but it’s so different that I, I don’t know it’s going to be, it’s also going to be interesting to talk about because I watched this movie and I thought, oh my gosh, there was so much going on here.

And the quality is so good. I can’t wait to read about all of the behind the scenes. Nothing.

Todd: Right. So weird. Right? It’s like four years old. This movie. It was on Netflix and it’s by this filmmaker who was well acclaimed and respected for the previous films you’ve done. And there’s like no trivia. And I stumbled across a couple of interviews by him.

People interviewing him about this movie and they inevitably end up talking about the raid and the. Two as well. So there’s just not a lot, except for what was kind of going behind his mind when he decided to put this film together, which was basically like, Hey, I had these little nuggets of ideas and I kind of bounced them around.

And over the years, I just pieced them together into this. It gives the impression of a movie that has something deep to say, perhaps about religion, faith in the faith and stuff. But actually, you know, when you see these interviews with the director, he’s like, I was really, wasn’t trying to go that way at all.

He said, I was really just playing those, this basic theme of men who just kind of corrupt something. And, and, and, and how does that end up playing out? He in fact was really trying to avoid any direct criticism of religion in general, simply because, uh, he said, you know, he has a lot of religious family and, and all that.

Yeah. And he said he really wasn’t interested in going down that road. And I, and I can kind of see that in a way, because I think the film was way more nuanced in that regard than we typically get from this kind of religious cult horror. One thing that the film did for me anyway, quite well, was it started out and you said two and a half hours and it’s long.

And I will say it all. It feels long, but also it’s never boring. And so I didn’t care, right. There was always kind of on the edge of my seat. Almost every scene sort of ends and in more mystery to unravel, you’re never quite sure exactly what’s going on here. And that extends through so much of the movie and so many shocking things happen.

Over that time period. It’s just full of surprises and it’s, it’s quite nice. But one thing that it did really, really well for me is that I started out feeling like, okay, evil call, terrible people at the beginning, trying to get ahead. And by the end of the film, I at least had some degree of sympathy. Uh, at least a more nuanced feeling for the perpetrators or whatever of the bad stuff that’s going on.

Then I had at the beginning of the movie, that was impressive

Craig: as it turns out, you know, there is a bad guy in the end, but he’s

Todd: almost kind of comes out of left field really. Right. He

Craig: does well. And it’s almost as though this character. Who ends up kind of being the bad guy. I mean, he just kind of loses it at the end.

It’s not really

Todd: like, he was a horrible guy from the beginning scheming.

Craig: Right, right. He just kind of loses it at the end and, and the people that you believe to be the bad guys, and you could argue that they are because. They’re doing is, is pretty bad, but ultimately they’re, well-intentioned, they’re trying to provide this cult, these cult leaders, they’re, they’re trying to provide for their community and they’re trying to establish a safe Haven and avoid, you know, persecution and, and, and they just want to be independent and it, you know, like they’re, they’re trying to.

It’s set in what? Like 1905, I think. Is it England or Wales? I don’t remember this community. This small community goes to this island. They want to be independent. They don’t want to be reliant upon. They’re national government and they don’t want to be burdened by their national government through taxation and all those kinds of things.

So they’ve established themselves as this independent colony and they are self-sufficient or at least that was the plan, but things are not, it seemed like things were going well, initially, everything was going great. And now things aren’t going well, things are actually going very badly. The, um, the crops are.

Growing the animals are dying and not reproducing. And, and so there’s a mystery there of, of why all of this is happening. The thrust of the plot though, is that this guy, Thomas, who we’d mentioned before Dan Stevens is told by, I think it’s like the manager of his fathers. We only see his father from the back, like sitting in front of a fire.

Like I got the feeling that he was like mentally incapacitated in some way. Thomas’s sister has been abducted by this Colt who is demanding a ransom and they demand that the father come to them. Island their colony with a ransom. They want him to come by himself. And if he brings any kind of law enforcement or anybody else with them, they’re going to execute the daughter.

But because he’s incapacitated, they’re sending Thomas and they think that this is a good idea because everybody believes that Thomas dad, they won’t be expecting you stay hidden. The money’s flock. But do not pay the ransom they seek until you see a lie. If these people plus femurs cult a disease, careful,

this movie. Together like a puzzle. You know, all of these little things are revealed to us over time. So we don’t know this initially, but we find out that Thomas has been off and correct me if I’m wrong here. I got the impression that he was off doing missionary work, Christian missionary work, but he and his fellow missionaries were tortured.

And. Many of them executed. Is that kind of the feeling that you got in

Todd: China,

Craig: right? Which leads to a crisis of faith with Thomas Thomas was devoutly Christian, but now doesn’t have faith in God anymore because of the terrible things that he’s been through. But because everybody thinks that he’s dead, they won’t be expecting him.

Um, and so he’s gonna go and kind of infiltrate this place. And so he does, he goes and he in, and he has to take a boat to get there because it’s an island, obviously he’s smart because as he’s in line and the boatman is. Taking tickets. I don’t know if Thomas gets suspicious or what, but he, with, through some trickery, he switches tickets with another one of the passengers and they’re both welcomed onto the boat, but when they get off the boat, the guy who he switched tickets with is.

Taken away by a bunch of men. And eventually Thomas sees him brought into the village unconscious. And eventually, as it turns out Thomas’s ticket, which he switched, had been marked, they had been expecting him. And so. They torture this poor guy who has no idea what’s going on because they think that he must have the ransom on him, which he doesn’t.

Um, but at that point they also know that they have been infiltrated and one of the other people, cause it’s a whole boatload of people, probably 20 people or something that they bring over and right away. We just kind of get introduced to this village. There’s a creepy statue of what appears to be a shrouded woman.

And it appears very much to be a religious icon, uh, right in the middle of the village. And, uh, we just kind of start to get to see village life and we’re introduced to a variety of characters. There’s a guy named Malcolm, who’s the leader of their. For lack of a better word church through backstory. We also find out that he and two other men, they refer to themselves as brothers, but I.

Ever figure out if they are actually biological brothers or if they’re just talking about, you know, like brothers spiritual. Yeah, exactly. So there’s these three guys, Malcolm is the leader and he’s like the preacher and he’s even written a book like their religious text is written by him and everybody has a copy of it.

And we see kind of, uh, their religious, uh, ceremonies, which. I say ceremony. I mean, it’s basically just a church meeting. It doesn’t really seem like anything that out of the ordinary. And we start to meet some other characters in the village and I don’t know what you want to talk about. I don’t know how much you want to get into it because cause there are, there’s probably, I don’t know, five or six characters who we are interested in.

Like all, all three of the men have children, so Malcolm’s daughter. Is Andrea and she’s this very beautiful red headed girl who almost seems out of place in, in this village because she is, you know, she’s all dolled up. Her hair, you know, is done and she’s in makeup and beauty. Dresses all the time. And she seems well liked and respected, and she kind of takes care of medical needs for people and, and whatnot, young.

Beautiful. And then Frank is one of the three men and he has a son, um, named Jeremy. And then the last guy, I feel like. Quinn. Yeah. Quinn and Quinn has a daughter named pheon and as it turns out, Jeremy and pheon are young lovers. And so there’s this young lovers plot going on behind the scenes and all of these, you know, like I’m just mentioning them, but all of these characters are intriguing in some way.

Like I was in interested and invested in their stories, but. What it comes down to is Thomas has to infiltrate and investigate without being discovered because they’re look either they know somebody there, they know that there’s an outsider in their midst. And so they’re keeping their eye out for him.

So he has to. Lay low and do everything very incognito. And then there’s just bizarre stuff going on. Like at one point, um, I feel like it’s the very first night, there’s a nighttime bell, like a, a curfew bell. Like everybody has to go indoors at the same time and they’re not allowed to be out, but, uh, Thomas does go out and through a window, he sees a family.

Uh, a father, a mother, and a child going through some kind of weird bloodletting ceremony when he returns to his room, it’s like a hotel or a dorm. Every room has. And he was given a jar when he, uh, came onto the island and every room outside the room is the jar. Full of blood. Um, like everybody on the island has to do this and he loves this.

He just takes his jar and like skims a little off of a couple of other people’s jars to fill his up. But in the meantime, he accidentally cuts his hand on his room key and it bleeds onto the floor. And after he goes into his room, We see the blood kind of moving towards a crack in the floor. And then we just get a quick shot of some kind of freaky person under the floorboards, like slurping up the blood.

Todd: Like it’s so weird. The other thing I didn’t quite understand is, so everybody’s got this bloodletting ritual and stuff, but nobody clued him in on it. Nobody visited his room with a knife saying, Hey, a time to collect your blood tube. There’s a lot of this week and stuff that’s going on. And so you’re constantly just wondering, and in his sneaking around, he sees that, um, Malcolm, uh, has a secret trap door in his yeah.

His place. And so he, you know, moves a table and flips up a rug and opens up a trap door and Malcolm’s house is kind of on stilts. So he goes to this trap door, but then it leads into this underground something. And we even see that Malcolm goes through this trap door, through some passage under the ground and comes up in the woods to a large box.

That’s overgrown with things and he goes there and somebody opens the door and lets him in. And then, you know, something freaky must be going on inside. It’s super intriguing and you do wonder what’s going on. And at the same time, you know that this guy. Is in trouble. And he’s made a little map on a piece of paper of the whole compound and made notes on that as well.

And at some point later on, they have a big ceremony, right? Uh, not ceremony, some kind of big festival, and they’re getting a little more desperate to find the guy who’s infiltrated it. And so then they search all of the rooms while the whole festival is going on. Malcolm and a couple of, you know, his two brothers basically.

And, uh, they go searching, they’re trying to find who’s their guy. And he almost gets by except they notice this map and that’s what Malcolm’s in trouble on. So they kind of chase him and he goes into the tunnels again. Thomas. Yeah, Thomas. And so he goes into the tunnels again and, and then while he’s in the tunnels and he runs a Malcolm is at the end of the tunnel.

He’s written a horse out to the barn and he’s standing above that trap door with a gun, just waiting for this guy to come through. But he’s a little smart about it. And he doesn’t quite come through at the same time. They’ve sent who’s the other, your guy, uh,

Craig: you’re killing me, not a Frank Frank through

Todd: the tunnel.

Thomas here’s Frank coming down. And so he evades this by sort of going into a sub tunnel, like a there’s like a little God. It was like, um, like a creative it’s like, yeah, there’s

Craig: like water running underneath and he’s able to get under there. And

Todd: it goes under that. So Frank completely bypasses him practically gets shot at the end.

At the meantime, while Thomas. I mean, and he’s on his back in this water, it’s a tiny, tiny little space, right?

Craig: There’s only like inches, you know, of air, like he’s, he’s basically submerged, right?

Todd: He’s backing himself up, backing himself up and suddenly a woman. Which looks a lot like that freaky person that we saw under the floorboards and probably was appears out of the water and starts just creeping after him and in this intense scene.

And you’re like, it’s just like, what in the hell is going on here? You know? Like, there are just so many layers to this, even by the end of the movie, I don’t even understand.

Craig: I think I do now. You probably just skipped like, oh, I skipped over 1,005 minutes. Yeah. Um, which is, which is fine, but like key things that happen when he’s in that underground underwater tunnel.

This is not the first time that Thomas has seen this woman. When he was in church, he saw her like walking past the windows outside. Um, and Malcolm seemed to take notice that Thomas saw her. Thomas has also caught glimpses of her in the woods. And, and she’s very strange looking. I mean, the best way that I can think to describe her as like in.

American mythology when you, especially a period mythology, when you think of like witches of the woods, like, you know, they’re creepy looking, but there’s something almost like they are a part of nature. Like, I don’t even know how to describe it, but like a wood, which, or a wood Nim for something but old and creepy that he’s seen her stuff.

Times. Meanwhile, he’s also, Thomas has recruited Jeremy to kind of help him. Jeremy is the young boy Frank’s son because Thomas caught Jeremy and pheon coming back from their boat lovemaking. So basically blackmails him. And he, he tells him who he is and why he’s there. And Jeremy knows. Uh, Thomas shows him a picture of his sister and Jeremy knows who she is and why she’s there.

But as it turns out, We eventually get into this barn and we see that this woman, this weird woods woman is like imprisoned, I guess, like she’s grown into this giant vine system. She’s kind of like reclined into it and it’s all grown into her. Like she’s stuck there and we see Malcolm feed her. His blood.

He cuts himself and feeds it to her. And she seems reluctant to take it at first. But when she does take it it’s as though she’s starving for it. And when she does take it, the vines. Surrounding her start to flower as though it, you know, her drinking the blood is, is bringing life to things. Now there’s a whole lot of when you said when they figure out it’s Thomas, because they find his map.

I was super surprised because I looked at the time and there was still like 45 minutes of the movie left. Yeah. Wow. They know who he is there on this little island and there’s still 45 minutes left. How man, but there’s still so much that goes on. Um, and a lot of it is, is, is running around and being chased.

And, but as we’ve both said, it’s never boring. There are always these little revelations, some important things, I guess, to mention Andrea. The really absurdly made up and pretty one clearly has taken a liking to Thomas and eventually starts helping him. Pheon and Jeremy though, they’re unmarried and very young find out that they are pregnant, which they’re concerned about because this is a very religious community and they don’t know how, uh, you know, They’re going to do, and they’re so sweet.

Like they’re the Romeo and Juliet of this movie. They’re, they’re so cute. And Jeremy also seems maybe a little bit simple, like just very naive and innocent. And they’re these cute young kids. Like I was rooting for them and horrified that something was going to happen to them, which it does, but, and like you said, there’s this big celebration, you know, but at the same time, Constantly reminded that the village is basically dying.

They, they have no, that’s why they need the ransom because they need to keep bringing food and supplies from the mainland because they have nothing. They, their, their crops have failed. Their animals are dying. We see a scene of a sheep giving birth and it gives birth to a lie. Uh, what are baby sheep calls a lamb?

It gives, it gives birth too alive lamb, but it’s gross. And like they kill it right away. Cause it, it, it, there’s obviously something wrong with it. And so all this stuff is going on. The, one of the things that weirded me out the most that I definitely don’t understand is that the woman in the woods now at first I thought that this was her servant, but I don’t think ultimately that it is, I think that it’s somebody there that’s.

Guard and care for her, but it’s a fricking gimp. Yeah,

Todd: it’s weird. It’s got, I mean, you never, never see what it is. It’s just a, a big Hawking.

Craig: Gotcha. Listen, man. Shirtless bully seems to be covered and yeah. Dirt and blood and wearing this whole thing over his head. Like, it looks like they’ve wrapped vines or thorns or so

Todd: it’s like a beehive or something

Craig: lately encapsulates his head.

Like there’s no openings for eyes or nose or mouth or anything. And he’s just there apparently guarding

Todd: her garden. And grinding up body and feeding

Craig: her. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we don’t see that at first. At first we see that they’re, they’re like slaughtering like rabbits, um, and stuff and feeding her, the blood.

And, and again, it usually turns out that it seems like she doesn’t want to take it, but she, she always does. But eventually, um, once Tom. Makes his way in there. He sees corpses and his sister is there, uh, tied up and hung in a sack with. A couple of other people, I don’t know if they’re supposed to be living or dead.

They they’ve also tried to taunt Thomas out by wheeling his sister into town and chaining her up, you know, in town for a little while. But you know, he’s strong and doesn’t reveal himself, I guess he thinks he’s going to find her later. I feel like there’s no getting around. Just kind of jumping to what’s going on.

As it turns out, these three guys discovered this island and they discovered this woman. Now, I don’t know if she’s a spirit or a witch or some sort of goddess or something,

Todd: somehow a protector of the island or something. Right.

Craig: They discover her and they in trap her. They, they capture her and they, you know, at first it just seems like she’s this goddess that they’re worshiping and maybe, you know, this is what she wants.

They have to feed her the blood or whatever, but it’s not, she is a prisoner. And, uh, at first, um, by feeding her the blood of animal. It made everything thrive and everything did thrive for, for a long time, but then things started to go south. And so they thought, well, the animals aren’t working anymore.

What do we do now? And so they started feeding her. People now, I don’t think that that was Malcolm’s idea. Um, Malcolm, I think thought that if he fed her his own blood, that that would be enough to sustain her, but because it wasn’t the other two, especially Quinn. Decided that they should start using people.

And I not, I’m not really sure where they got these people. I, I assume that there were abducting people from the mainland. Um, cause it doesn’t seem like they were using their own people. It seems like their own people would have caught on if that were the case. Um, and they’re continuing to do this even though it’s not working, which is.

Odd to me, but, uh, all of this is revealed to us and that’s when everything. Just goes to hell really there there’s a big turning point. And I feel like ultimately this big turning point is the climax of the film. Now a lot of stuff still happens after it, but I feel like there’s a major turning point.

You’re

Todd: talking about when Quinn discovers his daughter Thomas early on seized it Quinn’s daughter and another boy. Jeremy are getting it on secretly. I’m having this little love affair, this little tryst, but it’s kind of forbidden. She’s young. I don’t know her dad doesn’t like him, whatever. It’s just this sort of like a, keep my daughter a Virgin kind of.

Right. And when Quinn finds out that his daughter, uh, is pregnant, well, she finds out she’s pregnant. She there’s this whole subplot and she kind of figured it out. Asking around and all that. She finds out she’s pregnant and there’s this actually really touching love story between the two of them. Yeah.

It’s very sweet. It’s you know, this, this movie does a great job of character building, I think. And, and especially like you really, you like these two kids, like, you know, they’ve got this sort of forbidden romance and, you know, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but, you know, she ends up pregnant.

She hardly even knows what that is or what that means or whatever, but. They meet, they decide they’re going to do it. They’re going to make it work. But her dad finds out her dad has been kind of lurking and has been a little suspicious about what’s been going on and he bursts in to her just at the top.

The Jeremy had run out to get a gift that he’d been making for her. Oh God, it’s so horrible, right?

Craig: Yeah. He, he, you know, they, they make love on this abandoned boat and they talk about how they’re going to use parts of the boat to build their own home. And he has, you know, broken up the boat and has made this carving to like, hang over them.

Her or whatever. Um, and yeah, hope and they, they’ve also this sheet. She is only now just told him that she’s pregnant and he’s nervous because he knows because they’re not married, that this is going to be looked at as sinful. However, his dad is one of the three brothers, like the founding fathers of this community too.

And his dad. Has decided that he is going to take his son and leave that the society is failing. You know, it, it’s not working. And while all of this young lovers stuff and what’s coming. With her dad while that’s happening up at the village. Frank Jeremy’s dad is actually down at the docks talking to Malcolm.

I was happy following you when this was all a bit award of your heart. Come on, fuck. This. This is how an island. We built this with our own hands. You mean? Quinn tell a Potter Tice. Nope. It’s sort of hail and I’m dragging the boy doing with me and you you’re under no, no, no, no. You’re wrong. Frankly. We have homes.

Yeah. We have families.

We have a gourd and chains poisoning us from the inside out. We have an innocent man’s blood on her hands. We have a kidnapped Gettel held for ransom. I go to my grave, washing the blood of that. We sold from my aunts. Let’s please. This community it’s broken, but basically Frank tells him no, I’m, I’m taking Jeremy and we’re going.

And so when pheon tells Jeremy that, uh, She’s pregnant. He says, come with us and she’s a little bit hesitant, but I think that that’s the plan. So everything’s planned out, they’re going to leave the island. They’re going to go to the mainland. They’re going to make a family together. And so he just goes to get this gift that he’s made for her.

And this all happens. I remember thinking as I was watching it. Life happens so fast. Sometimes like in one moment they are celebrating the fact that they’re going to be together. They’re going to have a family. He leaves for a brief moment and everything changes. And, and then when he, I just can’t imagine because he comes back.

With this gift for her and what he comes back to is just an absolute nightmare. Yeah.

Todd: Quinn has killed her. He was so angry at his daughter and she’s begging him. She’s like for the judgment,

Craig: that was actions. Oh no, no, no,

not him. He followed only what I asked.

That’d be a whole  to my eyes.

I’ve no idea. I want monstrosity.

It’s just an abomination. I busted Munga lights breed to be born in lumps of twisty

child.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. And he’s like, no, and I thought, oh God, what’s he going to do? But he ends up killing his daughter

Craig: brutally killing. Now I will say that. I feel like the movie established that. Fear is not irrational because he was the one that delivered that gross lamb.

And so he says to her, your baby is damned it’s going to be a monster. Um, and so I think he really believes that to be true, but I also think in this moment he just loses his dad. Right. He

Todd: does. He completely loses his damn mind and he and Jeremy have a fight and that spills out into the front yard, but he kind of yells out and frames Jeremy for killing the girl.

And he’s got a cut in his neck. So it appears that, you know, to everybody that Jeremy is the one who did this and is trying to kill him too. He says, uh, bring out the, what did he call it? The, oh God, I know it’s the name?

Craig: It w it’s not like the salvation table or the purification table or something like that.

Todd: God. And now, apparently this is something that’s supposedly only Malcolm can do based on the laws of the, of the town, but he’s taking it into his own hands. And I love, by the way, I love that he yells up at the guy at the bell up top. He’s like ring the bell and everything make an announcement. Everybody bring out the salvation table.

And at that moment I was thinking we’ve seen that guy, but that bell a lot. Does this poor man, just stand up on that platform all day long, just waiting for opportunities to ring that bell. What he’s got the shittiest job on the whole.

So they bring out the salvation tape. At the foot of this statue that they have in the middle and everybody’s gathered around. And of course, it’s this horrible torture instrument and they strap him down on this thing and it’s, it’s basically vices around his legs. Arms and, oh my God. One of the most brilliant and unsettling scenes I’ve ever seen is then his head to his head is in this vice and they’re cranking this vice and suddenly we see a POV through his eyes of him looking kind of up at the sky, but off to the side a little bit.

And we hear this vice cranking and as it’s cranking, suddenly. The view shifts a little bit because his eyes look straight up and then suddenly there’s a crunch and there’s a little bit of redness, like blood in his eyes that come over. And I was like, oh my God, it was brilliant. And it turned my stomach.

I haven’t had my stomach turned like that since like the first time I saw saw in the movie. And that it doesn’t get any better because the way this device works, of course, he says some words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this guy’s an asshole. He says this words, you know, this guy did this thing to my daughter, yada, yada, yada.

Now he has to be purified and he leans into him and whispers in his ear. I’ve been wanting to do this and he, thanks, God. It’s so bad. He cranks this, uh, it’s like a screw. It’s like a screw and then attached to the screw is it’s a drill attachment, you know, that cuts like a hole,

Craig: a hole, right? Like you would use to like cut an opening for a door knob, like a circular.

And basically, you know, it drills right into his head, but then that part drills, the hole, like it like a fist of fist size section of his head out. Um, and, and he’s alive. I mean, not for long, obviously, but,

Todd: um, and cranked, that was, and it was sad. Like

Craig: I felt cause this kid, I mean, he, he’s a nice kid.

Anything wrong and to just be brutally murdered publicly at the hands of this guy who we know is villainous and, and crazy at this point. And then Frank and Malcolm, who I said, had been down at the docks, they arrived to the scene it’s already happened. Um, and it’s Frank son. So of course. Freaks out and Malcolm approaches Quinn and says you had no right to do this.

And Quinn basically says, well, you’re not in charge anymore. I’m in charge now. And, uh, he says that the only way at Thomas and Andrea have all, they heard the bell. So they’re also, they’re witnessing all this, but Tom Quinn has had a couple of his goons, um, restrain Thomas. So Thomas is restraint. He tells Malcolm the only way.

You can prove yourself is to kill the intruder. And Andrea is begging him not to. She’s already said to Thomas, you know, I know my father, he wouldn’t kill anybody, which is dumb because we’ve seen him kill somebody before. But, uh, Malcolm is, uh, you know, he’s, he’s reluctant, he’s hesitant, but it looks like he’s going to do it.

But then Frank comes back out. He had run into. His house or a house and he comes back out with a gun and he fires the gun and then it becomes a big chase. They all end up back at this barn. Thomas is there first Quinn and Malcolm have a confrontation outside Quinn shoots Malcolm, but in the shoulder and he falls back into the pit that we had, you know, Thomas was crawling through before.

And then Thomas gets his sister out of the sack that she’s hanging in, but then he has a really violent fight with the gimp. Whoa. And there’s a whole big like person. Grindr and Thomas, this almost gets pulled into it. Like he like his hands. Does he loses three fingers on one of his hands? Yeah. Is still able to fight.

And eventually I feel like he gets the gimp into the grinder and then the gimp is dead. And then he goes over to the, the woods woman and she speaks to them in a different language, but apparently he can understand her. And she said, I’ve been waiting for you for so long, my son or something like that.

And God, I don’t even remember what comes of that.

Todd: He sets her on fire right at that point. Yeah. Burns up the whole freaking thing. He releases her, sets her free.

Craig: She indicates that he wants her to, um, it like he’s freeing her. I mean, it looks like she’s burning, but apparently he’s freeing her. Meanwhile, Quinn has.

Uh, Thomas’ sister and Andrea, uh, chained up to a wall in the church and he tells them, and I, I was like, oh my God, is this movie just going to keep getting more and more gross? Like he tells them that he’s going to impregnate them both and then feed their babies to them. Woods woman, and that will make everything good again.

Right.

Todd: I, I don’t understand where that came from, honestly. And that’s, that’s a pretty long-term solution. I mean, it takes nine months to have a baby. Yeah.

Craig: While the village is burning, I guess, because the woods woman is burning. Now, the village is burning. Everybody in the village is freaking out. I think.

The village people realize that Quinn is crazy. And so they just want to get the hell out of there. So they’re all heading down to the docks, uh, to try to get away. There’s a big fight between Thomas and Queens. Thomas wins, uh, eventually.

Todd: Okay. Oh my God. Yeah, that’s an intense scene. Every fight scene.

They’re really well done. Like the bit between Thomas and the gimp, the bit between Thomas and Quinn and the girls, and they kind of get the best of them. Finally, at one point, like the girls. Get the gun, but they decide that they should shoot themselves out of the, you know, the wall that they’re chained to, which they do.

And I’m like, yeah. Now put that chain around his neck and they do. And I was like, yeah, that’s so freaking satisfying and they’re grabbing them. And then Thomas Lee comes over with a knife, stabs them in the chest and then the guy just gets gutted. Yeah. As he’s dragged by the girls in one direction and his knife is right there in his chest and the other it’s so.

Unbelievably violent and gory and yet so satisfying. Yeah. But

Craig: really well choreographed

Todd: and well choreographed and just. On. I was just on the edge of my seat the whole time for most of this, me too. It was so

Craig: good. Me too. Me too. Well, Thomas is gravely injured. Uh, they start to make, you know, the, the girls are free.

They start to make their way towards the docks to the boat, but they get, well, first of all, while they’re still in the church and everything’s burning, he’s like, okay, you’re free. Bye. No you’re coming with us. So he tries, but he only gets about halfway there. They end up kind of on these cliffs, overlooking the sea.

Um, and he basically stops and tells his sister, you know, he has a whole monologue. You know, this, this is about how this journey has restored his face. You know, uh, his experiences in China had robbed him of his faith, but he said, the one thing that he always held on to was her. Uh, and, and now that he knows that she safe, he can be at peace and she needs to let him go.

And. She does, you know, I was a moment like I would be dragging that guy down the hill. Like I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave him behind alive, even though it was obvious he was going to die. She goes on. And then he has a moment with Andrea too, you know, obviously. There was something between them, but nothing’s gonna come of it now because he’s clearly dying.

And he says to her, pray for me. Um, and she says that she will, and they go off and they get on the boat. Um, and, and it seems like there’s a ship waiting for them. I don’t know if they were expecting that ship. I have no idea, but the villagers are all gone and it’s just Thomas left on this cliff, but then.

We see Malcolm approaching him. And I knew Malcolm wasn’t dead because he had only gotten shot in the shoulder. And so he approaches and they kind of stand there and they look at one another and then Thomas. Kind of lays back into the, well, he notices blood is dripping from his hand or some part of his body.

And he notices that where the blood drops, the grass or weeds start growing, um, from where his blood drops. So he lays back and the grass around him. Growing up and it starts growing into his skin. Like it had been in the woods woman, and it almost seems kind of like he’s at peace and he’s just looking up at the sky and it cuts to black and it goes to credits.

I’m not really sure what to make of that ending. I don’t know if that’s meant to suggest. He’s going to somehow live on, on this island or

Todd: a replacement. I think it means he’s like the replacement for the woman, honestly. Yeah. Maybe like the Island’s got to have a guardian and he’s the new one and fitting actually, I, I liked it.

Yeah.

Craig: There’s I mean, yeah, I was sad because I really liked him. I would have much preferred that he got on the boat and got away too. But, you know, it’s, it’s the, the hero sacrificing himself to save the ones he loves, you know, that’s, that’s very common. So I understand and it’s fitting, but there there’s just so much going on in this movie.

I mean, of all of the plot points that we tried to hit, there’s a million other tiny little moments, um, that are worthy of discussion. We just don’t have the time for

Todd: it. Dense jam packed full of stuff and satisfying. I loved it. I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t watch it over two hour movie as voluntarily, but if you listen to us, talk about it and hear us more or less gushing over the movie.

I mean, I don’t know. It’s not like it’s the best movie that I’ve seen in my life. It doesn’t even make a lot of sense in a lot of ways, but. I was entertained thoroughly through the whole thing. And I, I was, it had emotional moments and it was well-made and it hit the gore factor if you’re into that sort of thing and, and, and queasy, touching sad, uh, exciting.

Um, you know, there’s a big mysteries to unravel here. God, like what, what, was there an emotion I didn’t go through while I was watching this movie, you

Craig: know? Right. Well, and, and there are certainly some. You know, it’s not like we’ve never seen a cult movie before. It’s not like we’ve never seen a period piece before, you know, so there are some typical, some typical things, but I just felt that it was approached and handled in such a unique way.

Um, it, it was it’s, it’s kind of like, uh, stumbling across a really good book. There’s just so much. Going into it. And I really, I was invested in the characters. I cared about the characters. I no pun intended, but I was gutted when those young lovers got killed. Like I just, I thought it was horrible. And, and this poor, this poor girl, I mean, she’s probably meant to be, I have no idea how old the actress.

Probably to be 15, 16 years old. And she’s just begging her father to love her and to protect her. And instead he kills her and, and then blames it on the, the boyfriend who did nothing wrong. You know, he loved this girl. He treated her with kindness and love and, and they were both innocent to see them to see them both.

So brutally. Killed. Uh, it was, it was rough. I, I liked Andrea. I wanted to know more about Andrea. I wanted Andrea and Thomas to be able to have a little love affair there. There’s just, there’s a lot going on. Um, it’s really interesting to watch. I may have gotten up once to use the bathroom, but other than that, I was just glued to it.

And that with my attention span, that says something. So yeah, I recommend this. I recommend this movie. It’s different. I had never heard of it. Apparently when it came out on Netflix, it was in their top 10 for quite a while. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did. So if you missed it too, I would really recommend it.

It’s a good movie. Agreed.

Todd: I completely agree with you. I’d recommend it. It’s good. It’s different. And it’s fun. Sometimes not fun, which is muscle, how good movies are. All right. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us online, just type in two guys and a chainsaw.

Podcast into Google and you’ll find our Facebook page. You’ll find our website and you’ll find our Twitter feed. You can leave us a message at any one of those places. Let us know what you thought of this episode. Let’s know what you thought of this movie. If you’ve seen it and recommend some requests for us to do a film for us to do in the future

Until next time I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We probably should’ve saved it for St. Patrick’s Day, but one of the few franchises that we haven’t hit couldn’t have waited yet another year.

This “horror” film would have been better off as part of our kids’ horror movie theme months. Nevertheless, we both held curiously fond memories about the inaugural episode of this long-lasting series of films.

Starring Warwick Davis, Leprechaun went to some crazy places – Vegas, The Hood (twice) and even outer space. We decided we’d start tackling this franchise by starting with the first, starring a fresh-faced Jennifer Aniston in her first film role, just a year before Friends. Enjoy our riff on it!

Leprechaun (1993)

Episode 263, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, I chose the movie. I picked a film that it was just a franchise that we’ve been meaning to get to that we, I haven’t even touched yet. This is 1993’s “Leprechaun”. Um, I, this movie, right, this movie is interesting. I, I first saw this movie in high school, so 1993, I was a sophomore in high school.

And I remember renting it from the video store. It was either that year might’ve been the, it might’ve been the following year. We rented it from the video store and we had it at one of those sleep over parties. It was a mix of people, guys and girls, and there was a girl I was kind of interested in. So I remember not pants too much attention to the movie.

And if you know what I mean, possibly even falling asleep in the middle of it, to be honest. And so my re my recollection of this movie is just in fits and starts. But I do remember that it was a bit of a. A bit of a cultural touchstone at the time, because Wayne’s world would always like reference it.

Right. Wouldn’t Wayne tease Garth by saying like, “I am the leprechaun. I’m going to come get you!”

Craig: I had forgotten about that.

“This next movie was great. I’ll be it. Upscale. It came out during the spring. It’s called the Leprechaun and yeah, the, uh, the leprechaun. Cool. I thought it was excellent. Yeah, it was really excellent. It was about this little mythical elephant creature with a really wicked tune. Do you remember that guy? Do you remember? I’m the leprechaun…”

Todd: Yeah, I think, uh, I think it kind of lived on more for that then, but then it spawned a number of sequels. There was a leprechaun two, a leprechaun, three leprechaun in the hood, leprechaun back to the hood leprechaun and space. And I’ve actually seen leprechaun in space. I

Craig: don’t know that I have, I, you talk about it incessantly, but I don’t think that I’ve seen it.

Todd: I think we need to do a theme month of in space movies. Cause there’s like a leprechaun and space. There’s like critters in space. There’s like, Jason goes to space at some point, right? Isn’t that? Jason X. Yeah. We’re totally going to do that one of these days. But, uh, but anyway, we can’t do the leprechaun franchise without hitting the very first one.

So that’s my background on the movie. How about you?

Craig: Yeah. I honestly don’t even remember. I, yeah, same, I guess I was in high school too. And I know I didn’t see it in the theater, but I definitely saw it and saw it. I’ve seen it a bunch of times. I’m sure. But it had been a really long time. Um, but they do play it on cable quite a bit.

And ironically, yesterday, When I needed to watch this for the show, um, I was flipping through the channels and it was on and not only was it on, but it was like right at the very beginning. And I was like, well, isn’t that cute? Yeah. And there was a, it was a marathon. I think they only went up through three on some cable channel, like comment or something.

I don’t know.

Todd: Do tell me you just kept going.

Craig: No, but I have, I mean, this isn’t the first time that I’ve seen them do that marathon and I have watched some of them and two isn’t particularly memorable, the lead protagonist or a young couple. I don’t know, it’s all about  blah, blah, blah. Right. I feel like the leprechaun like wants to marry the female or whatever.

And then the third one takes place in Vegas and is actually kind of fun is pretty funny. And those are the only ones I remember. I don’t think I saw any of the, in the hoods or, or space. And then after those, there was a big lull. And then they did a reboot, um, without Warwick Davis with a professional wrestle wrestler.

I hope I’m not getting this wrong. I honestly don’t remember, but I feel like the guy’s name is hornswoggle. Something like that. Oh, but he’s a professional wrestler and, and they tried to, uh, they wanted to take it back to real straightforward horror and get away from the comedy. And I watched, I think the first five or 10 minutes of that, and it was so bad, I turned it off.

I don’t even think I ever even saw the leprechaun. And then fairly recently, I don’t remember if it was Saifai somebody went back to the original franchise and they didn’t get Warwick Davis back. And I don’t remember why, but they went back with his look, uh, and went kind of back to the comedy. And some of the, at least one of the characters Ozzie from this movie, Was in that most recent one.

Um, and it referenced to the events of, uh, the first movie. And I haven’t seen it. I mean, I’d be willing to watch it, but I haven’t seen it, but yeah, I mean, this, this movie. As corn ball and goofy as it is, did spawn, you know, kind of a cult franchise. So, you know, there’s something to be said for that, frankly, going back, I have fond memories of this movie and going back and watching.

I’m a little curious as to

Todd: why, why Ising oh, isn’t that sad when that happens, right? It happens to us a lot on this show.

Craig: I mean, there is some cute and charming things about it. I mean, my favorite thing about the movie is Warwick Davis. I like more wick Davis. He’s a cool guy. Um, I think he’s a good actor.

He’s done. Some really good stuff. He was the lead in Willow, which I haven’t seen in years, but I just remember being a great fantasy movie. And, uh, he was in the Harry Potter films. He’s, he’s done lots. He was kind of a, um, you know, he and Billy Bardy were kind of the go-to, uh, little people for, for acting roles for a long time.

And this is one of the things that he’s most famous for. And, and really, he. W we’re Rick Davis is really responsible for what this movie is because it was conceived as a straight forward. Horror film and Warwick Davis saw his character as being more of a comedic character and, and the writer, director, Mark Jones, you know, he liked what Davis was doing with it.

And so he went along with this major tonal shift where it really became more of a comedy. And it is funny

Todd: in a really

Craig: well, in a really goofy, obvious kind of way. Yeah. Watching it this time. What struck me the most was that it feels like it’s meant to be a kid’s movie.

Todd: Yeah. That is exactly what I was thinking. I mean, this is along the lines of like troll and like the gate and these other kids’ movies. It really feels like that because like the level of humor and the way it’s done and it’s quite tame in many ways, apparently they had to go back in and reshoot to, to up the gore.

Right. Exactly. But even, even with that, it’s, it’s not gore. It’s not really that gory no effects. Blood on a face, you know, they’re not gross. Right. They’re not like, like what we’d normally see with these movies, especially this time period. Right.

Craig: Right. So it’s, it’s a lot of sight gags, you know, I was talking to my partner last night.

I’m like, okay. So here’s the movie. The leprechaun is on the try. Single the leopard gun is in a little car. Brick cotton is a skateboard. The leprechaun is on the roller skates. The leprechaun is in a wheelchair,

Todd: right. They hit all the major forms of transportation, except for like a plane and a helicopter, basically.

That’s it?

Craig: It was kind of hilarious. Just that it kept happening like, oh, like every, every scene was a gag. I mean, at one point the leprechaun is on the roller skates and he goes through a fence and leaves the leprechaun shaped hole in the fence. Like it’s so silly. Um, but you know, it’s a leprechaun Ray and I get the feeling.

That they knew what they were doing. That that’s what they were going for. They were going for site gags. They were going for goofy. And, uh, if that’s what they were going for, they certainly got it. I mean, it’s, it’s not scary. I mean, I don’t know what Garth was so afraid. Oh God. Because it’s not scary at

Todd: all.

And it, it it’s kind of a mess too. It didn’t get a lot of critical love the director. Um, the writer director, Mark Jones, um, comes from TV writing, mostly writing cartoons, like, uh, from the late seventies to the early to mid eighties, he was doing a ton of Hanna-Barbera stuff. And you know, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, they’re at like a thousand of them.

Right. Seriously. Mr Magoo. And then they’re all new super friends. Our captain caveman laugh Olympics, Yogi bear. Yeah. All that stuff. And he was writing for this stuff and did a little bit, I like did a couple episodes of the fall guy, but this was really like his attempt to break out and do a direct, you know, direct an actual feature film.

And so he wrote and directed this and you can see. Pedigree in the goofiness now. Yeah. I mean, I read the same thing that you did that Warwick Davis came in and said, look, we can, we can make this character more comical, but I’m sure that he coming from this background either already had some of that in there already, or at least was very well suited to be able to do this kind of silly kind of kids type.

You know, like you said, yeah, it’s just

Craig: goofy. Well, and I think that was the right way to go, because for sure, I think that, you know, a straight forward a horror movie about a leprechaun is you can’t get away from that being stupid. I mean, it’s just, it’s going to be stupid. In fact, you know, after immediately after this Mark Jones did another movie Rumpelstiltskin, I saw.

And it was awful, but I, I think that it was more straight forward horror, but it was just dumb, you know, like, uh, a little person in a costume running around barriers. His teeth looking stupid. And, and I, you know, it’s, it’s been probably, gosh, I don’t know, 20 or more years ago since I’ve seen that, but I just remember it being terrible.

So I think that taking the comedic spin on it yeah. Was the right way to go. But also, I don’t think that this movie would have. Any impact at all. And I think that it would have faded into obscurity and we would not be talking about it. Had it not starred Jennifer Aniston and her original name. Yeah,

Todd: I don’t, I love her original nose.

I didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Craig: It was a joy to see in this film I’m speculating. It just looks a little different to me, but no, I mean, It’s an unknown Jennifer Aniston. This was right before friends came out like right before, like the year before. And of course, as soon as friends came out, then Jennifer Aniston was a household name.

She was a huge superstar and this little stupid movie that she did did amazingly well on VHS because of her. Name recognition. I’m sure. It’s

Todd: why we rented it. I’m sure. Probably,

Craig: yeah. I don’t know. I rented everything, but yeah, she’s in this. She’s embarrassed by it. I understand why she might. Yeah. He, you know, uh, for a couple reasons, he at Warwick Davis at one point kind of publicly called her out for denying the existence of this movie and she responded and she acknowledged that this was.

Her first film success, but she’s just embarrassed by her roots by her early work. And, and she had done some other stuff too. There was a Ferris Bueller’s day off TV pilot that she did. She played Ferris’s sister. There was another, uh, right before she got friends, she was in another lame sitcoms. The, the producers of friends were able to get her out of her contract for that, so that they could get her on friends.

Uh, another interesting connection is that Jennifer Anniston comes from an acting family. Here it comes. Jennifer Aniston’s dad. John Anniston is a long time veteran of drum roll, please, which soap opera days.

Todd: I was coming. I didn’t know. No, but I knew by your buildup that we were going to get another soap, opera connection. That really, this is the only reason why I keep you on this show. Craig,

Craig: I like the days of our lives consultant.

Todd: You have the knowledge that I don’t have to really fill out all the. Big, sir,

Craig: John Aniston has been on days of our lives for probably 40 years and, and still is, uh, periodically at least I don’t watch it.

I haven’t watched it in years, but, uh, periodically he’s still on. He plays Victor Kiriakakis and, uh, sometimes hero sometimes. But I think if I remember correctly that Jen Aniston and her dad had a very strained relationship, I, I don’t think that he was very much present in her life. So I don’t think that, um, she really got much help from him in the industry.

I think that in their adult lives, that they’ve kind of reconciled, but I know that there was a lot of tension between them when she was a girl. Um, but anyway, here she is. And she’s, you know, she’s embarrassed by it. I can understand why, but really she shouldn’t be, it’s a bad movie. There’s, there’s nothing more really that she could have done with it.

You know, is she. No,

Todd: but what you’re saying is like the material she had to work with, right? I mean, the law writing is the writing for such an experienced writer is kind of shockingly bad. Yeah. It’s bad.

Craig: But, but the other thing that I want to dimension is the reason that she shouldn’t be embarrassed by it is because so many huge name actors got their start in crappy.

Horror movies, Matthew McConaughey, Renee Zellweger, Meg Ryan, um, Vigo, Mortenson, Brad Pitt. The list just goes on and on and on. And so, you know, what’s there to be ashamed of. You’ve got work. Put you out there loosen

Todd: up. Jen, come on, calm down. And the producers didn’t even want her on this movie. It was, it was Mark Jones who had to push and push and push to get her on there.

And again, really wise choice because as you said, that is probably the only reason why this thing did so well on the rental circuit is because of her presence. There are other recognizable characters in here. Oh gosh. Yeah. Alex, the little kid, Robert. Hi Gorman. You know, he’s not a name that you probably rattles off your, you know, your tongue, but he was one of these go-to little kids, right on TV and in movies, uh, at this time, uh, he was in forever young.

Just before this, which was a movie we used to watch a lot rookie of

Craig: the year. He was in one of the greatest movies of the 1990s. Don’t tell mom the babysitter said, oh God. Yeah, that is a coal Lassek. As far as I’m concerned. Totally recognizable.

Todd: And the guy in here who plays Ozzie again, not a dude that, you know, anybody could probably recall their names so quickly, but mark Holton is just a character actor in pretty much everything he was at pirate.

Remember

Craig: him? Yeah. Pee-wee’s big adventure. He was the bratty snotty grown man child. Uh, he’s hilarious in that movie and he’s pretty funny in this movie too, that again, this movie. Dated this character would never fly today. Um, I think that, uh, the, the safest thing that we can say to describe him is that he’s a simpleton, but it, I mean, it’s certainly implied that he’s in some way.

Mentally handicapped. And though he’s a lovable character w everything these days is just so PC and you have to be so very careful about, you know, representation, which I’m not saying is a bad thing. And I don’t even want to get into a big discussion about cancel culture because I have mixed feelings about it.

And I feel like no matter what I say, I’m going to piss somebody. Um, but it was a, it was a different time and, and his character is, is lovable. He, uh, Ozzy, that guy and the kid, Alex are kind of this cute little duo and they’re fun.

Todd: And then we have a hunky dude, the hunky dude can. Uh, and he, uh, was one of the guys in April fool’s day, which is another favorite of ours, uh, was on, uh, quite a bit of TV.

I dunno. I dunno if I didn’t really recognize him too much except for his role in, in April fool’s day, but a familiar as nice looking dude. Yeah, it looks familiar. And the father he’s barely a presence in the movie, but his name is, um, I think John Sanderford and he was in, Firestarter actually a lot of television.

What is it that I used to see him in? How do you, I guess you never a days of our lives.

Craig: Not that I’m aware of, but it wouldn’t

Todd: surprise me. He was, he was Crawford Decker and days of our lives. I’m telling ya

we should start a spinoff podcast. I’ve said it a

Craig: million times. I I’d have to watch it. Start watching the show again. I don’t know if I can commit that, but yeah. It’s a simple, it’s a very, very simple movie,

Todd: 15 minutes too long, in my

Craig: opinion. Oh my God. Really old. It was an hour and a half long. And I swear I was checking the timestamp every 10 minutes.

Yes, it was. It was way. Way, way too long. It would have been a really funny 30 minutes, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, oh, just went on and on and on. And it was just like, even though it was different gags every time, it really wasn’t. It was really just the same gags over and over it.

Todd: The same type of gags. Right?

Ooh. The goofy leprechaun is, you know, dancing on a skateboard away from them. I mean, The first 20 minutes is way too long and that’s bad. You know, I don’t think the movie kicks off with a huge bang. Well, that was the,

Craig: I felt like that was the only part that was a little bit scary.

Todd: The first part, the very, very first scene.

I mean, well, in the opening, the leper, there’s a leprechaun that comes down some stairs that seem like they’re underground or something. And he’s counting his gold and talking about his gold and he does a little, a little nursery rhyme type thing. He speaks in rhyme every now and then, and, and sings these songs, which is kind of cute try

Craig: as they win.

And China’s they find who steals Vigo or live through

Todd: the night. But then we get a guy who swings up in a limo to an old country townhouse, uh, and his name is O’Grady. Strong Irish accent tosses, a bottle of Jamison. You know, his wife’s like, oh, Daniel Gray. What are you up to this time? The top Irish. And you think it?

Oh, okay. So this starts on Ireland now. It’s like somewhere. Um,

Craig: well he’s just come back. I w we’re not Nella. I know

Todd: that we’re in North Dakota for this. Cause the dad makes a, makes a comment about it earlier.

Craig: Right. And he comes, but he’s come, he’s come back from Ireland. He was going to his mother’s funeral, but he comes home rich and drunk and it turns out he tells you.

Wife that, uh, he caught a leprechaun, honey, God has gold. And like, he shows the bag of gold and, um, he’s going to go hide it or whatever, but there’s a storm, a Bruin. And while he’s out hiding the gold, uh, the wife here. Uh, child like crying and then singing from his suitcase. And so the kids, like, I can’t breathe in here, please let me out.

Todd: So that’s pretty good. Right. So she’s done this

Craig: before. I I’m a voice actor on the side. I don’t, if you didn’t know that, um, I’m just kidding. I’m not really, uh, but the, uh, separate God pops out of this suitcase and. Pushes the wife down the stairs and she’s dead. And then he comes back and chases the leprechaun around with a gun and the leprechauns, like taunting him and speaking in his wife’s voice and, um, acting very cocky until this guy pulls out a four leaf and then the leprechauns like, oh no, put that

Todd: away.

Yeah. It’s a real four-leaf Clover. It’s this it’s so silly, right? Because he’s holding this tiny little four leaf Clover in one hand and a big gun in the other hand. But you know, this is just between his thumb and forefinger as he holds this out, you know, it’s like a. A really comical version of like van Helsing advancing on

Craig: Dracula.

Yep. And that’s it exactly. It’s like across to a vampire, it, you know, he’s scared of it or whatever, and he gets the leprechaun into a crate, uh, and he’s going to burn it. I think he’s going to burn the house down, but he. I thought he died of a heart attack, but we find out later that he just, he had a stroke before you can burn it.

And then we shoot to 10 years later with this aerial shot of this car, driving through. What I, I imagine probably was California. It looked like California to me. And there’s like a cookie four leaf Clover song playing in the background kind of stupid.

Todd: Some very labored, uh, dialogue between, um, Jennifer Aniston’s character, Tory and her dad.

And it’s just basically setting the scene point and, and, you know, part of the problem with this movie, it was, I think there were setups without payoffs here or themes that were, I thought they were trying to establish early in the movie that didn’t actually go anywhere. One of these things is that, you know, she’s her dad’s was hauling her out.

Middle of the nowhere Backwoods place to this cabin that he’s gotten for them for some, I don’t know if it’s, if it was ever explained why she’s this Beverly Hills, you know, kind of prissy, prissy girl. Supposedly very concerned about money and all of that. I’m

Craig: going to be miserable here. There’s no swimming pool.

There’s no shopping malls. There’s no cable, but you don’t even have it to you. They are the shrink Beverly

Todd: Hills a little bit later. There’s a line where he actually says to her, you know, there are more important things in life that money, and she’s kind of like, oh really? Well, what would that be? Um, she tries to pay a guy.

Later and, and I thought, oh, okay. So, you know, the leprechaun, the gold thing, somehow she’s going to have some character arc where, you know, the sun going to have something to do with her love of money. And just going to realize that that leads to issues and problems. You know, I thought maybe she would get the gold, you know, something like that, nothing like that at all.

That’s just kind of completely dropped.

Craig: She’s just a very flat Beverly Hills princess type character. And I. Imagined she didn’t have to dig too far to

Todd: probably

Craig: not. Will she? She wears LA gear sneakers. Oh my God. Oh, no hurt. Like these denim shorts with like pattern fabric sewn into it and a body suit that I guarantee you snapped at the crotch.

It’s so. Early nineties. I mean, it’s, it’s funny for she. She has. A portable phone and that’s what she calls it. Like, hold on. I’ll use my portable,

Todd: which time? I mean, come on like this, he, she had a little flip phone there I’m surprised she had a signal out there. I didn’t know. We had such cell coverage in 1993.

Honestly, we probably didn’t. They go out to this shack, which was the old Grady’s place, except it’s all grown over and it’s out in the middle of nowhere, kind of at the foot of some mountains. And they spend an awful lot of time in the basement. It’s like they go into the house. The first place they go is the basement.

And this basement probably like the size of my living room, but they spend a lot of time like looking around. And God, that was when I first started looking at it, I watch, I was like, God, just get out of the basement already. They’re having their whole conversation there. And she’s like, oh, grody. Oh, a spider.

Ooh,

Craig: this, and it’s a church ranch that always cracks me up and stupid horror movies where they’re just to ranches crawling around and they’re like, Ooh, a spider. Like, I’d be freaked out. If I saw tarantula in my house too.

Todd: Man. How often does that happen though? In real life? Not already

Craig: here in Australia.

That’s where all the big scary things are. I don’t know, I guess. Um, but yeah, the, the dialogue is, is just, it’s just terrible all around and, and she keeps talking about how. You could, if you took a shot every time she said she was going to get a reservation at a hotel, you would be dead.

Todd: That’s right.

Craig: So she runs out of the house cause she’s going to go to a hotel, but then she bumps into the hot guy and the hot guy is Nathan.

He’s like the head of this painting crew called three guys who paint and it’s. And Alex, the kid, a child and Ozzie, the simpleton and how these boys, men are related to one another is never explained, like, I guess they just all live together and paint houses in the most garish colors. You can imagine.

That’s

Todd: right. Bright blue and

Craig: red. It looks so stupid and like it’s a terrible term. Well paid job. And they’re just throughout, like the first 45 minutes of the movie. They’re just painting this one, like three by three spot on the house in these ugly, bold, like it looks like tempura paint.

Todd: I thought for a minute, I was watching cool as ice, you know, that was how it was, how the houses are all painted in that movie.

And it’s like, they switched from blue to paint a little bit of red on the shutters, but didn’t finish painting the shutter and just went back to painting blue again on the wall. They spend hours out there, then they need to go get more paint. Apparently.

Craig: And Jen Aniston, because there’s a hot guy. Now she is going to stay and she wants to say, and she’s like flirting with him and helping.

And at some point there’s a stupid, there’s a stupid gag where we don’t even see how it happens, but Ozzie gets paint, dumped all over his head. So he has to go inside to get cleaned up and he goes downstairs and the leprechaun tricks him using the kid’s voice, uh, into getting him out of the crate. And he gets out of the car.

And then Ozzy runs upstairs. Like there’s a leprechaun down there in the 30 seconds that he’s been gone. Jen Aniston has managed to get paint all over her arms. Like

didn’t nobody tell you how to paint exactly

Todd: by the way. She’s not wearing an apron or anything with her fancy expensive clothes here. Good thing. She only managed to get it on her arm. Yeah. And so then

Craig: of course, you know, they think, oh, just simple Ozzie, but they go down there to, you know, check it out or whatever, and they, they uncover a rat or something.

And so they, they, they, they write it off. Um, all of

Todd: this at this point is, is playing like a Disney movie of the week. This is what I was like, oh God, this is totally like a kid’s movie is what I was thinking at the time. But I remembered it being gory. So I was holding out for the gore. Well, in the

Craig: leprechaun says like, when he’s talking to Aussie Aussie, he’s like, what are you?

And he’s like, see me, hat Buchard is out in my shoes. I just, this is the stupidest.

Todd: Oh my God. And then comes apart that I still don’t understand. So they go down, they haven’t found the leprechaun. All our phones are leprechaun, it’s a mouse. Then they come out of the house. And as soon as they get out of the house, a rainbow paints across the sky,

Craig: in the middle of a perfectly clear day.

And yes, I didn’t remember that at all. It is like the reading rainbow, like, yes, it just shoots across

Todd: the sky and they look up and they’re like, oh, it’s a rainbow. Here. It just, there’s a lot of this, like unbelievable, just complete disconnect holes in the movie and the plot and things. I just don’t understand why Ozzie, like Harry, you know, what they say is at the end of a rainbow pot of gold, maybe we can go get the pot of gold and he goes tearing off and Alice goes, tearing.

After him to look for the gold at the end of the rainbow, which they immediately

Craig: fine, which they do

Todd: because the rainbow literally like it comes right down onto a broken down truck and the gold materialize. In front of us inside this truck. So they’re look inside the truck, they find a little gold piece and then AF as they’re looking a bag materializes.

So what is the deal? Did the leprechaun make the golden. It can’t be no

Craig: looking.

Todd: It is right. So the O’Grady hid the gold, but he didn’t hide it in the old truck. Did he? Or if he did just, why wasn’t it just there he realized. And why did this rainbow suddenly come up right after the leprechaun was left, was taken out of the crate because

Craig: this is a children’s movie.

It feels so much like a children’s movie, like not, you know, so that they follow to the end of the rainbow and then the rainbow disappears. But then as they’re like walking by the truck, the little gold piece in the truck, like sparkles and there’s like a twinkle sound effect, just like, oh, Gold piece in there.

It feels like it was made for children for like grade school children. It’s crazy that you will, Alex is all excited. He’s getting, they’re going to, if it’s real, you know, they’re rich, but they can’t tell any of the grown-ups because grown-ups, you know, grown up. Sorry. Especially with money, they’ll just take it.

So he tells Ozzie that he can keep the one piece that they found, but he’s going to keep the sack. And they’re like, is it real? And Ozzie’s like, oh, well I know how to tell if it’s real, you just bite it. And then the camera cuts away for a minute and then it cuts back and he’s choking. He swallowed it.

Todd: Alex says the weirdest thing he says, we can get you

Craig: to make smart. She would go to the hospital and have them operate and fix your brain. But I’m smart. Sorta what it means is we can make you real smart in a way. People won’t make fun of you. They make fun of me. Not in front of you behind your back. Come on. Let’s go.

You’re so mean. This guy was oblivious to the fact that people were talking about him. Mine is back. And you’re just going to tell him,

Todd: like for no, no reason, like what was the point? He didn’t have to convince him of anything in particular at this moment. Right. He was just getting them excited about having gold or something.

And also the soundtrack follows through with this sort of Disney feel. And I felt like, oh, this kind of, this slightly sad, poignant moment where this guy for the first time ever realizes that maybe he’s not quote unquote normal, like everybody else and is affected. And I thought that was going to go somewhere, but it didn’t, they just have this moment and then you scamper off and that’s really the last we hear about it until much later when the boy admits that he told Ozzie that they would fix his brain and Tori says, there’s no operation that can change Ozzie.

And he says, yeah, but he doesn’t know that. What w you had no need to first tell this guy there’s something wrong with them and then tell him, but we can. To what end? I, it was so weird.

Craig: I mean the whole character

Todd: of Ozzie was

Craig: problem. Yeah. And I would be interested. I would be interested to see the newest movie because Ozzie’s in it.

And I would be interested to see if he still plays at the same way. I imagine that he does, but it’s just, it’s not. You can’t say that, oh, he is this or, oh, he has this, like, he’s just childlike. Like he’s playing it like a, uh, he’s a grown man, but he acts like a little kid. Yeah. Um, I don’t know. It’s it’s awkward.

It didn’t bother me in the nineties, frankly. It doesn’t bother me now, but again, it’s too comical. I feel like it just wouldn’t fly today. Yeah. Anyway. Uh, the leprechaun. Strokes Tories legs from under the truck, which is crazy. And like she thinks it’s Nathan, like, so she thinks that Nathan crawled under the truck to stroke her legs.

Todd: What, so right after he just walked by her like moments ago and then dad says, oh, it’s just an old possum, honey. And then they all kind of turn and they hear a cat Meow and they’re all facing off screen. But we never see a cat. We just see them facing off screen and a cat meowing a few more times and they go, oh, it was.

It’s just the weirdest editing choices, right? Like usually the cat meows, everybody turns, and then we get a shot of the cat and then, oh, it was just, you know, cat, everybody was standing here and this fricking cat off screen,

Craig: it’s the leprechaun making a cat noise

Todd: inside the stump of a tree.

Craig: Right. And the dad like reaches his whole arm down in there.

Why? Like, just leave it alone. Gee, you need a cat right now. And if the leprechaun bites him and he pulls his arm, his handout, and I don’t know what they think. Was in there because it looked like a alligator bit, his hand, or

Todd: it’s like half his hand. This is huge chunk out of it. Yeah.

Craig: It’s it’s really. Yeah.

So then they take him to the hospital, which gets him out of the way for the rest of the movie, but it also gets them in town so that Alex and Ozzie can. The coin to the coin store, to Joe’s

Todd: coins.

And Joe is more than happy to let them in. And he looks at it and he’s like, oh, these are interesting markings on here. Can I keep this overnight and study it? Sure. And then this is where, uh, you know, I kind of stopped paying attention. Well to the movie. So they leave Ozzy and Alex leave. And of course we know what’s going to happen to Joe with his leprechaun coin.

He tried locks up, but he hears noises and he turns to open his safe, to put the coin away. And when he opens the safe out, jumps the leprechaun. So this leprechaun can presumably just kind of be wherever he wants. He can materialize and CLO in locked safes. He can materialize  whatever. He has to ride a tricycle all the way out behind the van to get to town.

And then he has to steal once he kills Joe and gets his coin with a Pogo

Craig: stick. And I imagine that this is one of the kills that they probably put in and reshoot. So they’re like we need more gore. So the leper con I don’t, he gets the guy down on the ground. Somehow, but then he goes over and gets a Pogo stick and just Pogo sticks on his chest wildfire.

Reciting this Limerick

lap teach you to steal. It’s very silly and very stupid. And the gore effects are not good. I mean, it’s just blood. I mean, I, I guess it kind of looks it’s the color of blood, I guess, but it kind of doesn’t make any sense.

Todd: you barely see anything. I mean, the idea of a guy Pogo, sticking someone to death is intriguing and it would be kind of horrifying, but you can’t even see. All you see is kind of the end result, which is just a, guy’s laying there with some blood on him. Yeah.

Craig: And from like you said, well, or excuse me, I feel like this is what kind of, what you were getting at from this point.

Nothing really happens. Like it’s just the leprechaun running around. Like he steals this little car from the coin store and then gets pulled over by a cop. And there’s a big, long, long. Seen of him like playing with the cop, playing hide and

Todd: seek with the cop, huge diversion from his quest for gold. You know what I mean?

He’s not so single-minded that he can’t spend 20 minutes running around and playing hide and seek with this cop in

Craig: the woods, kills him. He breaks his neck, but serious of that scene went on for forever. It feels like they’re stretching for time. Oh, I like the plot is so simple that they have to throw in these scenes because they’re trying to get to an hour and a half.

And it feels like it’s a little bit painful. The leprechaun goes back to the house and searches the house and like finds a box of lucky Clover cereal, which is obviously. Uh, lucky charms knock off, uh, lucky charms agreed to be featured in the movie. And then they saw the movie and pulled back out, which I don’t blame them.

Okay. But it, it, it w I mean, it’s kind of funny, but what’s the point. I mean, Hardy har he finds the lucky charms and then he eats it and spits it out stupid, and then shines all the shoes in the house. Like he is compel. To shine shoes. Like he has to, like, if he see shoes, he has to shine them. That’s important.

Todd: Yeah. That’ll pay off later.

Craig: The gang all comes. Yeah. They all come back. They find the mess, they find the shoes.

Todd: That’s right. And they’re just sort of like, oh, this is weird. You know, like it just kind of, they’re just willing to kind of. Throw their hands in the air and go, oh, well, whatever, you know, at some of this stuff and

Craig: probably a bear, the bear has come down here.

Everyone’s got no big deal then. Oh yeah. Don’t worry about that.

Todd: Worry about that. Bears will come into your house when you’re not home. Right. And as far as the shoes go, who knows whatever, I’ll bear like shoes. So then the Nathan. I’m going to go check out the bedrooms and find out where we’re going to stay tonight.

And I’m like, did they all come out here? Did they have no plan? Like

Craig: the painters are going to stay

Todd: at the house, right? Don’t they have a home of their own. And then I just dawned on me. This house is still just chock full of cobwebs. Like, even though the dad had fully stocked the kitchen pantry, he couldn’t at least dust off the very shelves.

He was putting the lucky charms cereal on, they were cobwebs over doors, the cabinet doors that they were all opening and closing. And I thought, my God, they spent a lot of time painting the outside of the house, but not even dusting off the table. They were planning to eat at that night or making a bed.

That they were planning to sleep. And why

Craig: are they even there? This is this, their vacation in this shit, whole house, like rock in it. Nathan goes out to like, I don’t know, they hear a noise or something. So he goes out and it falls into a bear trap that apparently the leprechaun set and then the leprechaun reveals himself and everybody sees him and like he’s attacking Nathan and everybody else is just standing here.

Whacking them with stuff

and Ozzie calls the cops. But obviously this also Jen Anniston, when she’s not saying that she’s gonna, uh, be going to a hotel, she’s ordering people around, like she’s, she’s constantly telling Ozzie and Alex what to do. She tells Ozzie to call the cops. But of course they don’t believe him because, you know, simple, Ozzy’s like, it’s the attack, it’s the attack, the leprechauns attackings in the armies.

And the Alex gets a shotgun. Nathan shoots the leprechaun. They think he’s dead, even though the body’s not there. Uh, and then story gets the trap off Nathan and she’s like, Nathan, that was enough there. So I also felt like they were like, they had to try to get the R rating safe. A couple of times we only need two.

We only need two for the AR

Todd: oh my God. The other thing is that you are shooting this leprechaun a hell of a lot. The leprechaun gets shot by people. I don’t know how many times, and it seems to work, but it really doesn’t, but the leprechaun will just lay there and then they just walk away from it for a little while and chatter.

And then when they come back to look for the leprechauns yeah. And so at this point I would be thinking, all right, well, obviously shooting a leprechaun, doesn’t do anything, but all they do for the rest of the movie is get chased by the leprechaun and chase the leprechaun with guns in their hands, trying to continually trying to shoot it.

And when they do end up shooting it and it’s dead on the ground, they walk away from it.

Craig: Well, I, I mean, I guess it does immobilize him momentarily, but I think that the suggestion don’t take advantage of them. Not really, eventually they, they try to get in the car and go away, but the leprechauns sabotage the car and the leprechaun attacks and bites Aussies,

Todd: but th they keep trying to take this junky car with a, with a wet wonky distributor.

Why don’t they take the frickin

Craig: right. That she has well, okay. So

Todd: the camera pans across the Jeep on

Craig: their way to, I know it doesn’t make any sense. And eventually they, you know, they’re like, oh, well he just wants to gold. So we have to give them the gold. And Ozzy is like, oh, well not Ozzy. Alex is like, well, I hit it in the well, so go out, you know, pull up the bucket, it’s in the bucket.

So. Tori goes out there and she pulls it up and it’s in there and the leprechaun operates, you know, right in front of her. And she gives him the gold and he kisses her on the cheek and she runs inside and she’s like, oh, well it’s over. Cause he got the gold or whatever, but then the leprechaun counts, the gold and one coin is missing the one that Ozzy swallowed.

So he’s not satisfied. He attacks again. And they’re like, what do we do? We can’t kill it. And, uh, somebody, one of the boys is like, well, we should ask Mr. O’Grady, this was his house. And he used to always talk about leprechauns and stuff. So we should ask him and they’re like, well, where is he in a rest home?

So Tori jumps in the Jeep. To go to the rest home and leaves the rest of them there. Why that doesn’t make any sense? Why, why wouldn’t they all go? First of all, and secondly, the leprechaun follows and chases her. Why. She doesn’t have the gold it’s Ozzy. He’s got it. It makes no sense. And there’s this whole stupid scene.

Like it should have been cut. It’s one of the many scenes that it should have been. Where she goes and creeps around this rest home for an hour,

Todd: worst rest home in the USA, which has a sleeping security guard. You could just walk right by and it’s dead, silent and completely dark

Craig: all night long and right in front of the sleeping guard, there’s a tablet.

That says in huge letters on the front room, numbers like that, and like written in Sharpie so dumb. She goes and she finds Mr. O’Grady’s room and she talks to him, but I surprised not him. It’s leprechaun. Then the leprechaun chases her around. Wheelchair. And it’s just the goofiest looking thing.

Todd: Then she chases her, he chases her onto an elevator and she, the elevator doors happened to shut just as she gets in there.

And as she’s going down in the elevator suddenly, oh, Grady falls through the roof of the house.

Craig: And it’s just hanging there. Like the butt is alive long enough to tell her that you need a four leaf Clover. If, if you can get a four leaf Clover and you can touch him with it, then you can kill him. And he’s like, there’s a, there’s a Clover pack.

Back at the house. So she jumps in her Jeep and heads back to the house and the stupid leprechaun follows her in the wheelchair. He

Todd: should have told her that there was a four-leaf Clover in the basement on top of that crate. Well, it has

Craig: to be freshly plucked. It’s what he

Todd: said. It worked for 10 years on that.

Craig: Great though. I know don’t ask me, I didn’t write it.

Todd: Why the leprechaun, who teleported next to her, you know, next to the, the, well, hasn’t just teleported back home. Why did he take that wheelchair all the way to the house and will that cause that

Craig: wouldn’t be as funny and see, I mean, we skipped all of these things, but I already mentioned them. Roller skates, skateboard, like anything with wheels that you can imagine he’s in at some or on at some point.

And there’s one point where he’s like, it’s like, you know, At carnivals, those old like shooting galleries where something will just go back and forth across

it’s him on a skateboard. Like he’s, he’s standing up on it that he’s laying down on it. And then he’s like, I don’t know, doing a headstand doctor. It’s like, it’s just the most,

Todd: it sounds funnier than it is, especially by this point in the movie when you’ve seen enough of this shit. So, okay. Yes,

Craig: they, okay.

So they get back and she goes to the glowy. Cloverfield site glows. She looked so it looks, can’t find it. The leprechaun chases her back inside. Eventually they they’re the three adults, ones, Ozzy, Nathan, and her ended up back there. Meanwhile, Alex is trying to set a trap for the leprechaun or something.

And then there’s this whole stupid, Tori’s like, we’ll never find it. This is so stupid. We don’t have the time in Ozzy. It’s like, yes, you will. You will find it. You just have to believe.

Todd: And she’s like, dammit, Ozzy, I’m tired of your time. Fairies and leprechauns and all of that. We don’t have time for that now.

And he’s like, you lost your faith, you can do it. You just got to believe. And so she closes her eyes and she just reaches into the Clover patch.

Craig: Okay, fine. I believe has that. And lo and behold, Oh, she pulls up the four leaf Clover. Like where is this coming from? When did this become a movie about

Todd: faith, faith?

Like what’s crazy. So

Craig: stupid. The leper con gets Alex and a is attacking him. The rest of them run in and Ozzie’s like, it’s not him. You want it to me. I swallowed the coin. And so then the lever starts chasing him and he eventually gets him and start slash Adam. I felt bad for this poor guy, because like it’s in his stomach, quit slashing in his face mean, but, uh, the, the kid Alex takes the four-leaf Clover.

Puts it on a wad of gum and pulls back, his Slingshot gets the leprechauns tension, lucky charms, which is the only good lie in the whole movie. And he shoots it and that goes right in the leprechauns mouth. And then the leprechaun is an agony and he like stumbles over to the well, and he melts. Gremlins style like spike at the end of gremlins, except there’s also like, you know, no, like green lightning lights stuff around or whatever, he falls back into the well, and they’re like, yay, it’s over.

But then he crawls back up and I don’t know, says something stupid. And Nathan pops him back down and dumps gasoline in there and lights it and it explodes. Cause that’s how guests. Works. It’ll look like a bomb.

Okay. And then it’s morning and the cops are there and the dad is there and it’s all over and everything is fine. But the camera pans to the well, so that the leprechaun can say some rhyme about how he’ll be back. Um, any. Because that’s what happens in the second movie that some other group of dummies ends up at that house.

And somehow he gets resurrected out of the well, and it just goes from there. Oh God. Wow. Honestly, like I liked it. I remember liking it and I guess I. Just, you know, I guess when we’re teenagers, we’re just idiots. I mean, I, I mean, that’s for sure. True.

Todd: Well, we had a different level of horror movie around us at that time too.

And wick Davis and Jennifer Anniston, and it was a leprechaun and it was silly and goofy and, and Wayne’s world was talking about it and, you know, and I mean, I can kind of put myself back there and, and remember how I was and how I felt and what we had to work with. No that why I maybe liked it. But as I admit, I was only half paying attention to it.

I think if I actually had to sit down and pay attention, take fricking notes on this movie back then, like I did now, even my teenage self back in 1993, wouldn’t have, would have been pretty pissed. Yeah,

Craig: I don’t know, but I can almost imagine that kids like little kids might still find this amusing just because the humor is so juvenile and, and goofy and that’s not a hit on kids.

I’m just saying, it seems like it’s, it’s more, yeah. It’s, it’s oriented towards, you know, A younger audience that would appreciate maybe the silliness of it more. Um, and, and kids, you know, there’s a little bit of gore a little bit and, and some kids would probably be effected negatively by that. But I, you know, I know a lot of little kids who are, you know, Playing call of duty or whatever.

So they’ve definitely seen worse. I’d let little kids watch it. If I was confident that they could handle that little bit of glory. I mean,

Todd: if they could see any of the other kitty type movies that we’ve seen gremlins or, or, you know, I mean, they could watch

Craig: this for sure. Sure. And, and they might find it funny.

I, on the other hand am old and jaded and. Rolling my eyes and looking at my watch, like, come on. Why is this over?

Todd: And this was a surprise for both of us, right? Like we just did not remember it this way, but

Craig: you know, I’d be re I’m very interested to hear what our listeners. Think about it. And if they’ve seen it now, you know, as adults and what they think of it now, uh, and if there’s, if they still appreciate it for reasons beyond the scholarship, because.

I know that nostalgia is a very powerful force, but, uh, beyond that, so let us know, you know, leave us a comment on our webpage or, um, on, on Facebook. Uh, if, if, if you’re in the same boat as. Where you appreciated it for what it was the time, but now it’s something different. Or if you think that we’re just being dicks.

I bet that’s the thing, Todd. I don’t, I don’t think we’re snobby guys. We’re not in

Todd: time. Nest algebra saves a lot of movies for us at the end of the day. We’re willing to overlook a lot for that. And this one just, uh, it didn’t work this time. I

Craig: mean, it was, I enjoyed watching it cause I knew we’d have a good time talking about it.

But beyond that, um, I certainly would never have any reason to watch it from start to finish again. I mean, if, if it were on and there was nothing else on and I wasn’t really paying any attention anyway. Sure. Let it play in the background, but. Uh, that’s about it. Yep.

Todd: Agreed. Well, thank you for listening to another episode.

If you enjoyed this one, please share it with the friends. You can find us online, just search to guys and the chainsaw podcast on Google, and you’ll find our Facebook page, our Twitter feed and our website. You can just leave us one of these comments on any one of those places. We’ll get back. And we will be getting back to more requests here very soon until next time.

I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

It’s request time again! Paul asked us to check out this take on a modern Norman Bates-style serial killer. This film divided us and is not to everyone’s taste. But with fantastic acting and cinematography, we did agree that the film had merit. If you wanna check it out, it’s on a couple streaming services right now.

Who’s Watching Oliver? (2017)

Episode 262, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw podcast

Craig: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: And this week we are taking on a request. This is a recent request from, uh, our listener, Paul, uh, and he texted us to commend us on our Rosemary’s baby episode, I believe. And he said, by the way, If you want to see the most messed up movie I’ve ever seen, you should check this out.

And, and his review was, it sucks, but I think it would be fun for you to talk about glowing, which you can’t wait to jump into a movie like that.

Todd: No, sometimes movies suck and they’re really fun to talk about because that’s true.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. But honestly, I went, okay, so you may have heard this backstory before, and I’m not going to get too much into it.

Cause I don’t want to divulge that. Secrets publicly, but, um, I’m a school teacher. Um, but I only teach seniors in high school where I live and where I work, seniors get out of school a week before all the other students so that teachers will have the opportunity to get their grading done. Um, in time for graduation.

Which happens right after everybody else leaves this year as has happened some previous years, I was able to get all migrating and stuff done a little bit early. So I had some free time. And so I was just kind of searching around, um, Free streaming services that weren’t blocked by my school server and to be was one of those.

And I came across this title and I remembered that Paul had recommended it. And so I thought, you know, why not? I’ll give it a shot. And I watched it and I was intrigued. Um, it’s, it’s not the type of movie that I would’ve ever expected to like, and I know. I would go so far as to say I liked it, but I disagreed with Paul.

I did find it disturbing. I did think that it was pretty messed up in a lot of ways, but I didn’t think it sucked. And the whole time that I was watching it, I just kept thinking I. Am desperate to know what Todd would do cause it’s, it’s different. It’s out of my wheelhouse. It’s a little bit, I mean, we’ve done some weird, you know, darker types of films like may and the woman, and I’m sure others that I’m forgetting. But it’s not necessarily our standard fare. Nonetheless. I did think that it was very interesting and I did want to talk about it.

Um, so that, that really is my history with it came out in 2017. I had never even heard of it. And it was kind of a little bit of a challenge to find much information about it. Um, if, uh, you dig deep enough into Google, you can find some interesting reviews and some interesting commentary. I don’t really know a whole lot about the production because there’s just not a lot out there to be found.

Um, but I did think that it would be an interesting movie to talk about. So, um, what are your thoughts,

Todd: huh? Well, I have a few thoughts of right out the gate. Um, first of all, Who’s Watching Oliver, I guess we have to… We don’t shy away from doing difficult movies, pretty much anything is on the table for us in this podcast.

And so, you know, the, the world of horror is a pretty wide open book and it, Roy ranges from the silly and stupid to the really dark, to the really thoughtful to the plain out. Um, exploitative, uh, that sometimes just, I think for you and me both just really pisses us off in a lot of times, you know, we, we are not big fans of sexual violence.

Um, we’re not big fans of gratuitous violence. We don’t. It’s probably hard for people to believe, right. Especially people who aren’t horror fans, but I think most of our listeners are horror fans. And so they get it. They get the difference between, you know, watching somebody get caught up, uh, watching somebody gets slashed and like a Friday, the 13th kind of movie.

And then a movie say like hostel, which is a little more realistic and a little more brutal and a little more like, oh, this could actually happen. And it’s extremely unsafe. Then there are the movies, like just about serial killers and murderers, and God knows this, this exists in our world. So it’s a different.

Kind of it’s, it’s not as escapist. It’s not the escapist fantasy that you get with, uh, just some supernatural, you know, person who’s terrorizing people or a ghost story or something like that. This is definitely far far in that latter camp. So this movie has a lot of sexual violence in it. It’s very disturbing.

I thought of it as a cross between maniac and mother’s day. I kind of felt like those are two movies. Are very Grindhouse. Um, they came out much, much earlier than this in the late seventies, I believe for each of those maniac was redone fairly recently, I think, as a big budget movie with, um, what’s his name from Lord of the rings, Elijah wood.

And it was a done in a slightly different style too. I think it was done kind of first person kind of interesting, but that movie was following a serial killer throughout his day. It was a character study really. And. Cool. I mean, the movie’s brutal for its time anyway. And, uh, it’s a little, it’s pretty disturbing as well, but there’s something about it.

It’s a character study and you kind of are intrigued by this man. What makes him tick and what’s going on and why is he doing the things he’s doing? It’s not that there are any big reveals. It’s. A character study of a really disturbed person who kills people is like what this movie is too. And then mother’s day was a movie that we thought we were going to hate because we knew it had a reputation for having some really disturbing rape scenes in it.

And that movie was about some guys who torture and kill women for their mothers entertainment. But yeah, we watched it and we thought, Hey, you know what, actually, a. As bad as we thought it w as its reputation had. Yeah. Women are getting the subject is disturbing. You say it out loud. And of course it’s, it’s terrible, but the actual way it was filmed wasn’t as brutal.

And as disturbing as some of the stuff we’ve seen. So at least we were spared that, but this movie, um, it doesn’t spare that it is just shy of pornography, really. And it’s very. Unsettling that way. And it’s in your face. And I guess, you know, when we, when you talk about what he said about and what you disagree, you know, about the movie sucking, I guess we have to define what sock is, right?

What is suck? I mean, did the story sock, did the idea suck? Did the acting suck? Was it poorly made? And I would tell you the acting was pretty. I, yeah, I liked it. Yeah, the mother’s acting. Um, but maybe that’s really just what they were going for, but I’ll set her aside and say that the rest of the acting and the movie was very.

And then I’ll say the movie was extremely well-made as in the cinematography was good. Uh, the shots were interesting. This transitions, the lighting, there were, there were definitely major artistic choices being made as far as the tone of the colors, schemes of the movie. Like it seemed like when he was happy and things were kind of going well, the movie was a little more colorful.

You know when bad things were happening or he was in his dark place. The movie got very gray and almost black and white. What I did manage to find about the movie is the director. Richie Moore is mostly, uh, has been a camera operator for some decent size, big budget, Hollywood movies. Yeah. It seems like he might’ve ended up in Thai in Thailand and it’s still there because a lot of the movies, more recent movies in his  including this one take place in Thailand.

And it seems like a, the main actor in this film was traveling to Thailand and got involved in some movie productions down there. He was a stand in for Bradley Cooper when they filmed part of one of the hanger move movie, hangover movies down there. And then according to his biography on INDB. Stick around and got involved with, it seems like maybe a little circle of filmmakers doing these movies.

I’ve just bouncing back and forth. And this actor is in a couple of these other directors, movies. This director’s written a movie that the main actress is in also, and they all kind of take place in Thailand. The other actress in this movie, um, Sarah molecule lane who played Sophia. The other one of the three main characters and she’s half Thai, half Irish and has been involved in apparently a number of, of productions.

Craig: Well, and she’s been in some other big things. I think she was in it follows. And I don’t remember, there was another movie on her resume that I

Todd: recognized, sorry, I’m a roundabout way of getting to my point. Um, I did not enjoy watching this movie. At the end of the day, I, when I say did I like it? No, I don’t.

I didn’t like watching the movie. It turned my stomach by the end of it, I felt like, kind of what’s the point, especially when the end credit scene came up, uh, the scene after the end credits. And then that really kept it for me. Like I thought, okay, this is, this is trying to be artistic. And it is an artistic character study.

That’s well acted, but. I didn’t get anything out of it. I felt like it was putting me through some really uncomfortable paces with no payoff. And especially with the end credit scene, I felt like, oh, okay. So. It diminished the film in my eyes even more. Um, we’ll, we’ll talk about that later, but, uh, I did the movie suck.

I mean, that’s really hard to say some people might enjoy this. Some people might get something out of it. Some people might’ve liked it. I didn’t find it a pleasant viewing experience. I’m going to have a really hard time finding things to say about it. And I just want to say sometimes you can piss me off too.

Craig: Back

Todd: at your brother. You remember this the next time I make you watch a giallo movie or some Italian zombie film that I did watch this movie.

Craig: All right.

Todd: You didn’t know Sarah enough, you didn’t know anything about it, but going in. So I

Craig: did though, because I watched it and then I wanted to talk to you about it. And it’s because I was, I was surprised and you set a lot in there. So many things that I want to respond to, one of them is that I do think that the cinematography is really good.

Yes.

Todd: Exceptionally good. This

Craig: guy who. You know, who has done, you know, first unit camera work on a ton of stuff. He’s current, you know, he’s, he’s working for Marvel right now. He’s shooting miss Marvel. He’s good. And it does feel a little artsy, but it feels like a different it’s shot, like a different type of movie.

And I think that that adds to the overall feel of it. Like it feels. Less like a horror movie in most parts or like, um, something like an Ethan Hawke, like before sunset kind of movie, like, you know, people walking around in foreign places with, you know, like you said, the light and the saturation and, um, and everything kind of comes from.

It’s not first person, like we’re not seeing things through Oliver’s eyes, but it’s all from his perspective basically. And it does get dark and, and there is, uh, it is graphic and graphically violent. I have said over and over again that I am averse to sexual violence. It really makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it at all.

And I don’t, and I don’t like it here, but the more that I thought about this movie and then watching it a second time, it is really not. Graphic compared to a lot of the things that we have seen. So Oliver is this nerdy guy, you know, in the beginning, you don’t know what’s going on. He’s just this nerdy kind of odd guy who.

Seems to be just kind of aimlessly wandering around in Thailand. It appears that he’s either just moved there or maybe he’s just on vacation there. And he has a very specific routine every morning and he dressed, you know, he wears these big nerdy glasses and he wears nerdy clothes, you know, uh, short sleeve collared shirts.

Ties all in very muted, dull tans and rounds. Yellows. Yeah. He’s almost

Todd: like an artifact out of time. He dresses like a 1940s middle-aged businessman, like Disney wear suspenders and he has these ties and he slicks his hair back with like old fashioned, like Brylcreem type stuff. It’s really? Yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

Grease. Like he greases his hair back. Yeah. It’s weird. And he’s white. Now I hesitate to get into this because I am not a medical professional, but I feel like they were going be because it is also becomes apparent that he is medicated. We find out later that if he does not take his medications, his mental stability, Slips badly.

I think that he’s meant to perhaps be on the autism spectrum or something like that. Again, please don’t come at me. I’m not a doctor. I do work with people with various. Mental health issues, but I am certainly not a professional, but based on my experience and my observation, I would say probably on the autism spectrum.

And, and that’s important to the story because he’s so meticulous about everything. The first time we meet his mother, his mother only exists on a computer screen. Um, he Skypes with her basically every day. Every single day at the same time, which appears to be late for him, but maybe they’re in different time zones.

I don’t know. It’s like 1:00 AM for him. I

Todd: did the calculation. It’s 1:00 PM for him,

Craig: right? Oh, is it? I don’t

Todd: know. Depending on where I assume she’s living somewhere, either in, in the us or Britain could be anywhere between 11:00 AM and like 9:00 AM, probably something

Craig: like that. And she’s this boozy. I don’t know, late,

Todd: late Betty Davis.

Craig: Yeah. Betty Davis type. Right. That’s that’s a good description. Brassy and kind of an off pudding mean way. Really she’s really

Todd: mean

Craig: that the first time you meet her, how are you, how was your trip? I’m fine. Very happy to know. You’re safe.

Have you met anyone yet? No, not yet. How about the house? Is everything set up? Do we have everything we need? There’s no, everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Good. Because it’s time. And remember darling, next time dress

Todd: code.

Craig: Well, I don’t want to keep you.

Talk to you later, that’s in the morning. And then his alarm goes off at 10:00 AM and he wakes up in the morning and there’s this just fun jazzy score as he gets ready for the day. And the score for the movie throughout is so antithetical. To the contents of the movie. Yeah. That it’s just jarring. Like it’s, you’re like, what am I

Todd: watching?

Happy jazzy, big band type stuff. Which, which, which also see, this is the mystery that I was hoping maybe you could help me solve it. He is, he’s not old enough to be stuck in an era that he grew up in. He wasn’t born in the forties or whatever we’re talking modern times. Cause he’s, he’s Skyping with his, with his mother.

Maybe this is his mother’s era, but it’s, it’s not just as clothes and the way that he does his hair and his glasses, it’s also like his apart. Like his apartment has these old fashioned picture frames in it. And he has an old style, a desk with a desk lamp and everything. For a moment, I thought I was in a period piece until I remembered that he Skyping with his mom.

And then he goes out into the street. No,

Craig: it’s no it’s modern day modern day Thailand.

Todd: So I, um, I can only think that maybe mom, this is sort of her era. I mean, I think every time he dials in with her, she’s got this kind of music playing in the back.

Craig: So I think that’s what it is. I think that he is so influenced, you know, everything in his life is.

The influence of his mother and, or his mother and his father, which comes in later, but it’s like, that’s what he was brought up with. And he hasn’t been able to break away from that. Fits with everything else too. Okay. So after he gets himself already, he goes out walking. He sneaks, I believe, into an amusement park.

Todd: Mm oh. Through the tunnel. You think that’s what that was? Yeah. Like

Craig: through a train tunnel. Yeah. It doesn’t seem to be a public entrance. And this is it’s, it’s an amusement park now. I’ve never been to Thailand. So I don’t know if it works the same way as it works in the United States, but the United States, you pay a whole bunch of money for admission, but he’s just hanging out.

There. Um, and he’s got his camera and he’s taking some pictures. He’s very awkward, very awkward, but I’ve worked with young people. Who are awkward in the way that he is? Uh, it’s not so strange, bizarre, you know, he’s just an awkward guy, but then at night he goes to the CD club and he very, very nervously, like he has to talk himself into it and like out loud and how he’s going to do it.

Picks up this girl who’s obviously strung out. And so he lures her home back to his apartment with a promise of drugs. When he gets her there, he gives her drugs. It seems to be cocaine because she snorts it. I don’t know my understanding of hard drugs. It is very limited, but she’s sitting there cutting her drugs.

A photograph of framed photograph of his mother behind her. He takes off all of his clothes except for his boxer shorts, which are. You know, something that a 70 year old man would wear. Yeah. And I also noticed, I don’t think I noticed it right away, uh, the first time, but this time I did, he, he has something scars on his upper back and nothing is made of it.

But I did notice this time. And while this girl is taking drugs, he sets up the video chat. He said, Mama wants to watch. And the mother aside from just being an old bitch is just nasty and she talks super, super nasty to this girl who I, if that was cocaine, I guess it was cut with something or something because she.

Virtually incapacitated while mama watches and gives instructions, Oliver, rapes, and tortures this woman. And I wrote down the things that she says while this is happening, but they’re so vulgar that I. I can’t even bring myself to say them. I mean, it’s just the most nasty, misogynistic, horrible things that she says and that she tells Oliver to do to her, which he does.

And ultimately he grabs a giant. The mother object’s like, no, no, no, not yet. But he slits the girl’s throat and the mom’s kind of upset that he killed her so quickly, but she says something like, well, at least she’s still twitching. At least I get to watch her Twitch. And then she says, just so in such a cavalier way.

Well, it was short, but fun could have been better now clean up and go to bed. Sweet dreams. Mama loves you. Closes out and after she closes out all over the girls did. But he apologizes to her and he keeps saying, and he’s obviously visibly upset, like on the verge of tears, he says to her, I’m sorry, I don’t hate you.

I don’t hate you. I did it really fast a lot quicker than she wanted me to do it. And then he ends up hacking her up in a very meticulous fashion. Everything’s very clean and orderly. Um, and he takes her body parts and dissolves them in some kind of chemicals. Big industrial tub in the alley, which is kind of stupid realistically, but whatever.

Now, the point that I’ve been trying to get to all along is that is very gratuitous and violent. But you said in the beginning, there’s lots of sexual violence. There’s not that’s it.

Todd: Now there’s one other one.

Craig: Is there, I mean, there’s violence, but I don’t remember there being another one. I mean it’s implied.

Todd: Well, I guess it cuts away just before it happens. Yeah. Because

because

Craig: I, I talked to my partner about this and I said, I don’t like that. I don’t like sexual violence. And here in this first scene, it is violent. It is gratuitous. There’s no question what’s happening. It’s not as gratuitous as some of the sexual violence that we’ve seen, but it’s very bloody.

It’s very violent, but I feel like. The director, the filmmaker chose to make that scene so violent and so gratuitous so that he wouldn’t have to do it again. From that point on you understand what’s happening, you don’t need to explicitly see it now. Yes, there are still a lot of carnage. And blood throughout the rest of the movie, but mostly what you’re seeing throughout the rest of the movie is aftermath.

And yes, there are a lot of naked ladies covered in blood with various, uh, injuries. You do see a lot of that, but you don’t see. That explicit sexual violence again, and maybe it was seeing it a second time and kind of having that in my mind that made me realize, yeah, it, it doesn’t really happen so much again.

Um, I mean you’re right. Personally, I kind of appreciate that. I appreciate the establishment. This is the horror that you are dealing with, but I’m not going to make you watch it again. You just understand that that is what is happening and, and what it comes down to is he’s doing this repeatedly, but he’s doing it at the behest of his mother.

And really, he doesn’t want to be doing it. But he is so under her thumb that he can’t break away from it. And beyond that violence and that gore, it’s really just a very sad story of a man who is a product of horrible abuse, who is unable to break free of his abuser. I don’t know. I thought it was.

Todd: Uh, I mean, I get you, there is one other scene and you’re right.

We don’t see the rape happen, but we do have a woman tied up in a similar position she’s conscious and screaming. And the mother is saying nasty things about her again and is saying, I want to see her asshole and flip her around so I can see. Which he does. And she’s like, oh, that’s so tight. You know, she’s never been, uh, you know, had it done there.

And so this is going to be really fun. Now turn her around. I mean, uh, okay. You know, it cuts away before he does the deed, which you know, is a little bit better than before. Hack the, the buildup to it was even worse. I mean, it, it’s, it’s very degrading, very debasing, very horrifying stuff,

Craig: but it’s, and she, but as degrading and debating as it is to these women and these women are.

Certainly objectified by the mother and one could argue by the filmmaker. I mean, all of, all of these women are very large busted and you know, he’s in Thailand. So it would make sense that these women would be. Persuasion, but you could also argue that it’s very sort of Asian fetishism. Kind of stuff going on here too.

Um, it’s also implied that most of them are prostitutes through which I, which I think Oliver justifies his own actions in that way. In fact, the first girl, when he’s apologizing to her after she’s already dead, he says. If I hadn’t done it, meaning killing her, the drugs would have done it only slow her so slower.

So I think that he tries to justify it to himself, but it’s not only degrading and debasing to the women, but it’s so degrading. Oliver too. Like she just says the most horrible insulting, degrading things to him all the time in these moments. And there’s another important part is eventually he meets a girl in the amusement park that he hangs out with.

And, and that’s important that I want to talk about it, but when he finally confesses. Mother. Well, he doesn’t even confess at first, but she kind of picks up that something’s going on. And I think, um, that she suspects that he may be seeing somebody. And so on one of their video chats, she forces him. To jerk off for her.

And it’s like, show mama, how much you love her then? I mean, it’s just, it’s so gross. Like it’s so disgusting. Um, and it’s, you know, he’s crying. And he doesn’t want to do it. And he’s saying he doesn’t want to, and he’s tried, he’s rehearsed in the mirror. How he’s going to tell her, I don’t wanna do this anymore.

You, you, you know what I mean? The Kaelin, it’s not who I am. It’s who you are. I’m sorry, but, but I don’t want to do this anymore. You, you, you can’t tell me what to do. I’m not, I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m a man. I met someone. I like her and she

Todd: likes me.

Craig: Th this has to stop. I, I still live here, but . It’s wrong. What you make me do?

Todd: I have a cat

Craig: and a girlfriend. She, she might even love me. Why she can, she could, she could, I could be like everyone else. I couldn’t. I couldn’t be like everyone else. No, no, no. I don’t have to listen to your bad anymore. Mama. No goodbye.

Mama. Goodbye mama. But in front of her, he just has absolutely no. Power at all. Um, and as much as he’s rehearsed it, as soon as she starts making demands, he does what she demands. And it’s first of all, I mean, it’s just the whole notion of a mother forcing her son to jerk off. Like a cam girl, you know, it’s gross, but you feel bad for him.

Like, and isn’t, that’s weird. Like, I think that that’s something that makes the movie interesting to me. I think that we are supposed to feel bad for Oliver and almost maybe be rooting for him in some way. He’s a

Todd: pathetic character. Yeah, you’re right. We are supposed to be rooting for him. I mean, You know, all the tap dancing that we did around, what, what might be his actual affliction?

He’s clearly mentally unwell. I mean, it’s not just that his mom controls him, but her, his mom probably controls him because he is mentally unwell. He’s got some mental issues that have to be controlled by medication. And it’s mom uses that because she’s a nasty person to just make him do things. I thought mom, Here’s the thing like, okay, you can say that this movie is really trying to paint a more sympathetic portrait and it is of Oliver.

It’s a portrait of a person. Who’s a product of abuse. And, um, you know, this happens in the world. And so the knowledge of this, we can be more sensitive towards it and things like that. I mean, I can get on board with a movie like that again, this kind of characteristic. But it’s offset by the mother.

Character is just so unbelievable. I mean she’s so over the top and I don’t just mean the nasty thing she sang, but the, her delivery and her heavy makeup and sitting in front of that thing, I mean, every time she comes on the camera, it’s like a, it’s like a very poised, posed, um, what’s the same scene, but it looks like a, it doesn’t look like just somebody logging in from their web.

She’s in front of a wall with pictures on it, and she’s sitting there. She sometimes has a drink in her hand, often has a drink. In her hand. I felt that the mother character was so over the top that it stopped being an interesting realistic character study of a person in this horrible in insane extravagant situation to being kind of dumb exploitive horror.

I mean that, that killed the, that feeling for me. And you’re right. That we don’t have to see a lot of the sexual violence over and over again, but we’re seeing it in different forms. We’re seeing the aftermath, we’re seeing the dead bodies, that the camera, Lears a lot over these bodies of women and their, and, and it’s not just.

Hey, we’re trying to show you how horrible death is and, and, and make it realistic. But it’s like over their curves and their legs. And it’s sometimes you do this full frontal female nudity, and here you can say yes, these women have been debased. And so it’s showing that yeah. Where is the line where the filmmaker themselves is kind of debasing these women as well.

And I felt like it just crept a little too much into that territory for my liking, you know, it’s a line, there’s a line there and it gets some, maybe it’s a little different for all of us, what we’re willing to tolerate. But my interpretation of the film was that at that point where the mom character was just so extreme and over the top, it reminded me a lot more of a seventies, exploitive Grindhouse movie.

Than what the movie was purporting to be otherwise, which like you said, and you’ve got it. You have a very good description of it. It’s very artistic, personal. It’s very in your face with this guy and you are supposed to feel sympathy for him, but I just couldn’t in those circumstances because it didn’t feel like the filmmaker was all in on giving us a sensitive portrayal of him when the mother characters, just this way.

Craig: I don’t disagree. That she’s over the top. She is, I bought it. Um, I don’t know if it was the actress or something about the performance, or I think that maybe it was the way that she and Oliver interacted because she was so domineering and he was so. Submissive, he’s a broken person. And she, I think played a big part in breaking him.

And I think that he is just helpless in front of her. And I think that she wields that power maniacally. She enjoys it. She enjoys the power that she has over him and she relishes in it. And, and so I kind of bought it. The other thing is. She’s a monster and that’s how we’re supposed to view her as a monster.

One of my favorite parts of the movie. And I think that other people would argue that it’s cliched and stupid. I totally disagree. There’s one thing. This cat just shows up at his apartment. And at first he tries to shoo it away, but eventually he embraces it and it’s kind of nice. Like he kind of has a relationship with something other than his mother.

Um, and there’s just this one brief scene where. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by these drawings that look like illustrations out of a children’s book. And he’s talking to the cat and he says, this is my story. And you can see the title page. And it’s called raised by monsters. And he tells the story. He says, little Oliver was happy and brave, but he was raised by monsters.

He didn’t want to be a monster one day, daddy monster. Hurt all over and it burned him. Right. Which explains the scars on his back. But mama monster saved him and killed daddy and they lived happily ever after. And then he pauses for a second. And then he just very quietly says, no, they didn’t. And that’s the end like this kid.

Clearly, you know, both of his parents apparently were horrible and horribly abusive, and he has these scars apparently from his father burning him. And then, you know, just the mere fact that his mother murdered his father and he knows about this and I buy her as a monster. Uh, and so her over the top performance doesn’t bother me.

In fact, I think. Adds something to the movie, you compared it to mother’s day, which I hadn’t even really considered, but it is like that in a way the mother and mother’s day is very over the top. I mean, that movie is very over the top. Call that movie, a very black comedy. And

Todd: that’s what made that one work in that circumstances that we never took mother’s day that seriously.

Right. Because the mother was so over the top and that performance was, was that it was the right performance for that movie. And that. Tampered down the sexual violence, because you couldn’t really take it that seriously. And so you’re right. It became a black comedy. This movie was listed on, I watched an Amazon prime and it was listed there as a horror comedy.

That I got no, I mean, there is a little bit of dark humor in here, but you cannot classify this as a comedy. And, um, and I MDB doesn’t classify it as a comedy, so I don’t, I don’t know what’s going on over there at Amazon, but, uh, I mean, the other thing that I, that, that just didn’t, it didn’t land for me either was the introduction of the love.

It. He’s sitting in. In fact it happened in such an odd way that I thought maybe there was going to be a twist coming up. He’s sitting in the park on his bench. Like he normally does as part of his routine. It’s just to go and sit. He has a camera with him, but he never seems to actually use it. And he just sits there on the bench and is looking at things and suddenly a woman in a dress very Hollywood, like kind of creeps around behind.

It seems to take interest in him from behind then kind of sweeps around the front and kind of sits down and strikes up a conversation with. This very unlikely conversation with this random stranger. Who’s not saying or doing anything who’s completely awkward who can’t even have. Talk to her, but she seems struck by him.

And at first I thought this must be like a figment of his imagination. This is like his other ed or something chatting with him. And that’s what’s going on here. I mean, I guess it still could be, I don’t know. I don’t think the movie’s really arguing that, but I could be one yeah. Interpretation.

Craig: Uh, it’s possible.

You never see her interact with anybody else. Really. It’s very true. The intro, the introduction of her. I mean, she just sits down next to him. Now, first of all, she’s a beautiful woman and she’s dressed, you know, I don’t know, I’m not a fashion kind of guy, but she’s dressed really cute. Very put together. I mean, she does not look like the kind of girl who would be approaching weird guys on park benches now, to be fair, he plays the role so very awkwardly, but like you said, he was a stand in for Bradley Cooper.

You know, in some movie or whatever, if he were to present himself in his natural way, I can only imagine that he’s actually a very handsome man. Um, but he just plays the awkward so crazy. She sits down to him. And the first thing she says is. I had the craziest dream last night. And, um, she tells the whole story of this dream.

And I think that it’s, I didn’t think anything of it the first time

Todd: around sounds a lot like his story.

Craig: Right. She’s like, okay. So I was on this ship was like a cruise ship, but it wasn’t really that fancy. So maybe it wasn’t a push, but everybody was dressed really fancy. And I was dressed in rags. The only way I knew how to get off the ship.

Jump over board. So I did anyway, I was in the water. I was so happy. And then the craziest thing happened. My, my tooth fell out. It’s really strange. And then I saw a piano at the bottom of the ocean playing the most beautiful music. I just, I felt like. In, in a nutshell, what the story is is that she was very out of place somewhere and had to escape.

And yes, that’s very similar to his situation. And according to her now they just have, I mean, it’s very much a meat cue. He’s very awkward at first. But he keeps coming back every day and she keeps coming back every day and it blossoms into what is obviously a very innocent romance. They do cute stuff together.

They ride the paddle boats together and they go on the amusement park rides together. He does use his camera to take pictures of her and take pictures of them together and silly, cute coupling kind of situations. I mean, he’s always awkward that never goes away. But there’s clearly a shift where he seems to be opening up and having an actual fun and making a connection with somebody over the course of that time.

She, I think she tells him before she finds out what’s going on. Um, but she says that, um, she comes from a place where. She just says she didn’t have a normal upbringing. She didn’t go to school. She didn’t have friends. And he says, where you in a cult? And she says, yes, but I didn’t know it. And he says something like, well, what was it like?

And, and she says something like they made children do things that children should never have to do. It’s it’s all very vague. Yeah, eventually he is conflicted, I think because he wants to be with her, but he’s still, the mother is an anchor for him. Like he she’s the albatross around his neck that he can’t get rid of.

And he tells his mom that he’s met somebody and he thinks that he can be happy and it’s just pride. Manipulation from this mom. Oh, you met somebody. Oh, you think she loves you? Well, if she loves you, she must know everything about you. Right? She must know about all those poor innocent girls that you beaten, tortured and raped and killed.

Poor sweet girls. Like, you know, nobody can never love you. Nobody. Mama loves you. Mama protects you. You know, mama’s the only one who will always be here for you. And then she tells him, go get this girl. Uh, and bring her to me. And he says he will now I think knowing that he was going to be confronting his mother, he was very nervous.

So he had cut that day short with Sophia, Sophia being curious, had followed him and is continued to follow him. And so she sees when he comes. Out of his apartment goes back to that same CD bar, picks up another girl and brings her back and tells the mother, this is her. This is the girlfriend, but gosh, I’m sorry.

I’m, I’m getting long winded, but I keep thinking of it. Also apparently in this instance, whether it be because he’s nervous or what he’s forgotten to take his medication. Yeah. And so when he gets back with this girl, he loses it and he’s very violent with her, but the mom can tell that he’s not taking his medication.

So she’s trying to calm him down and it’s very strange. Sings a song to him. I looked it up. It’s a German song. It’s a song that’s meant to be sung when you’re bouncing a baby on your knee. It’s a song about a guy riding a horse and he falls off and he hits his head. Something, I, I doubt there’s any real significance, but it’s very repetitive and she sings it over and over and over again.

And eventually he starts singing it with her and she starts substituting the words for the song. Oliver take your pills. And he finally does. So she thinks that he’s killed the girlfriend. Cause that’s who he said this girl was. Um, but as it turns out, he goes to the park the next day. And Sophia says I had another dream last night, but it was a nightmare.

I dreamed that you had another girl and he says, no, no, I don’t have another girl. And she says, I know. Because I saw you dumped the body. And I was very taken aback by that the first time I saw the movie and it is weird because she’s just okay with it because in her mind, they’re both broken. He does things she even says, he he’s like, I don’t want to do these things.

I don’t want to do it, but my mama makes me there. There is another woman in my life. It’s my mother. And she makes me do these things. And she says, I understand that’s what childhood is all about. Being forced to do things that you don’t want to do. So obviously she comes from. An abusive background as well.

So they have this kinship and this understanding of with one another, where she’s willing to accept that he does these things. Because she gets it. I don’t know. It’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense to a logical mind, you know, but maybe if you are such a broken person, you could empathize. With another person who’s broken in that way.

Sure. And it’s sad. It’s sad for both of them. And like, it makes you root for them. You want them to get to be there for each other. You want them to rescue each other? Yeah. It’s so weird. It’s so weird to be rooting for the. Broken sad characters.

Todd: I agree with you. I just, I just, it just wasn’t convincing enough for me.

The relationship was just really rushed and the meeting was very sudden and she just instantly starts talking about stuff that he can suddenly relate to. Like what did she just see something in his eyes or something from the back of his head and she’s so not. Okay. So she’s beautiful. It’s not a big deal.

Right? Okay. So she’s beautiful. But she’s too pretty. She’s too accepting. She’s too. I mean, there’s no. Conflict there where there’s no personality there. We don’t see her struggle with this at all. We’re just supposed to accept well, because she told a couple stories about how broken she is. Now. We were going to have to understand that she also must come from a broken home and that’s why she is willing to accept this and forgive it.

It was much better, easier for her to, to believe that he, you know, could kill these women rather than you know, that he had another woman or could cheat on her. It all makes sense. When you try to argue it out, I just felt like the way it played on the screen, wasn’t convincing enough for me

Craig: when they do establish this connection, he does confront his mother finally, and he seems happy.

He seems like a different

Todd: person. Was he, did he stop taking one of his pills at the same time? It seemed like he was only taking the yellow. He was taking pills, but only one of them. I don’t know. It was a small detail. I wondered if a significant,

Craig: but he does tell his mother I’ve met this girl I’m in love with her.

And she’s like, what are you talking about? I thought we killed her. Um, but he says, I’m not doing this anymore. I can’t do it. And he closes his computer screen and there’s like just a very brief montage where you see that. Joyful, like, you know, he’s laying in his bed playing with the cat, he’s smiling and laughing, but coincidentally and simultaneously, he goes back to the park the next day and Sophia doesn’t show up.

Yep. And he keeps going back seemingly day after day, looking for her and she doesn’t show up. It, it, it destroys him and eventually, and not unexpectedly when he hits rock bottom, because she’s abandoned him. He goes back to mama and he talks to her and says, She left me and the mom’s like, of course she left you, you know, nobody loves you, but mama.

And he, it goes right back to routine. In fact, it seems like he starts killing on a more frequent basis and, and it’s right back to it, like steps right back into the, the role that he was initially. The exact same routine. Um, but yes, then, and we see this is where it’s very gratuitous with the nudity. I mean, we just see naked woman after naked woman.

Getting hacked up or laying in pools of blood or whatever, but eventually he’s, uh, just killed this one woman and mama’s still on the screen watching this, but he is hacking up this woman and Sophia shows up and

Todd: she walks in and he kind of looks up and she looks down at him and he’s just happy to see her, I think.

But, but you know, it doesn’t quite register on the.

Craig: Right. But, but where were you? You know

Todd: what happened? Yeah. Yeah. And she, her excuse is just, it’s very vague, but it’s like, it’s almost like people were coming for her and they couldn’t let her out. I wondered if the whole

Craig: family, her family, her and she she’s.

Yeah. She said that her family found her and, and kept her and wouldn’t let her leave. They kept her. Captive, I guess. And she’s only now been able to get away.

Todd: I thought maybe it was, they were implying like a mental hospital or something like that. And that could

Craig: be, but she does say it was her first. Oh, okay.

Todd: Okay. Um, so you know, the mother kind of comes on and she starts taunting him and anti antagonizing him and they both go to the computer. Right. Close it on mom, then they’re both undressed and there’s a dead body on the floor between them all bloody and gross. And they have this kind of awkward bit of walking towards each other slowly approaching each other.

Basically, this is the consummation of this relationship over a dead body. In the middle of the room, which none of them care, but neither of them care about. Right. In fact there, yeah, there’s a big to-do made of it where they’re stepping on the floor and it’s sticky and they’re kind of finding the right way to stand over the body and they kiss and they embrace.

Then that’s the end, right? The credit credits credits and the credits roll. And they’re pretty short credits actually. Um, not a lot of people worked on this. Right. Uh, and then, uh, there’s an end credit scene. It’s, it’s the same shot of morning again with the clock and Sophie, uh, is in bed and she kind of wakes up and she looks down and he is back on the line with mother and she looks a little alarmed and he turns around with a knife and lunges at her, and then it goes

Craig: well, and, and it shows the mother on the screen with like, Demonize.

Oh yeah. And that’s, that’s not like, I don’t mean like Rosemary’s baby demonized. Just like, like black, like her eyes are just black and she says something, I think in a different language, but I couldn’t tell, but in a very, uh, demon voice that we’ve never. Heard before she has a very kind of high grading voice really.

Um, and I thought that that was a weird and interesting choice to suggest perhaps something demonic or supernatural at the end, because there had been no suggestion of that before I actually, you know, I, I liked the end credit scene because it was fun and tonally. It was, it kept things really dark. I kind of think that if you in.

With the, the scene that comes before the credits roll. That seems almost more in keeping with the trajectory of the movie. It’s almost as disgusting as it is as disgusting it as it is for them to be consummating their relationship over this mutilated body. It feels like. The happy ending, you know, they, they have each other and they’ve shut mama out and it feels like the happy ending, the end cap takes that away from you.

And that’s okay. I mean, that’s, it’s fine. I don’t know if it’s a choice that I would have made, but

Todd: whatever. No, the end credit for me just kind of confirmed. I felt like, okay, this movie all along was just exploitative again, really well made. Like, what is he now? Freddy Krueger, you know, like, ah, you know, I thought everything was fine, but now, you know, I’m never going to be freed.

Mom’s turning into some monster now. Right? I’m going to get you to like, it just, I mean, you can argue, well, it’s going to take a lot for this guy to break free of the grip of his mother. Right. But wasn’t the whole point of that last scene like that this woman could be his salvation. They closed the computer together.

I mean, I thought that. Significant and purposeful. And then you throw, oh, this thing at the end and it’s like a ha gotcha. Kind of back to it. Friday, the 13th ish type horror movie, I thought it did the movie a huge disservice, and it just kind of kept my feelings, like I said before that if they were going for a character study, but they also had too many elements in there that, that made it unrealistic.

And just like an exploitive horror movie. Was off-putting to me. And it made all of the stuff that I think was supposed to shock me with a purpose. Feel like it just shocked me too.

Craig: Yeah. The supernatural elements of that law. That very, very last scene I could certainly do without. However, I do think that the movie or the filmmakers, however you want to phrase it were intentionally nihilistic.

No, you don’t get a happy ending people. Don’t just. Miraculously escape, their team wins for lack of a better way of saying it as much as you wanted to believe that Oliver could break free from his mother. No, he’s not going to know. And I’m okay. Uh, with that overall, I just, I don’t know. I was surprised by this movie.

It was very different. I thought that it was skillfully made. Like you said, this guy has a lot of, uh, camera experience, but this is his only full. Um, film that he’s directed and I think shows a lot of promise. I also, the guy who played all over his name’s Russell, excuse me, Russell, Jeffrey Banks. Um, he co-wrote.

The script and he plays Oliver. And I thought his performance was really, really strong. It was very, very nuanced, very believable, not exploitative. You know, when you have people playing. Individuals with mental health issues or disabilities, you walk a very fine line because it can fall into exploitation and that’s not good, but I didn’t feel like I thought this.

Very well played and no, you know, I watched it that one time kind of casually. Like I wasn’t, you know, I put it on just to have something on, I was doing other things, but I found myself being pulled into it, watching it the second time and watching it closely. I really appreciated what was going on. I’ll never watch it again.

There’s no reason to watch it again. For people who, you know, are interested in interesting filmmaking, interesting storytelling. I think it’s, I don’t think it’s a,

Todd: I think I can get on board with that too.

Craig: All right. We appreciate the recommendation. Um, from Paul Saint Paul, you know, it’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s definitely something that is interesting and that I was excited to talk about. So thank you for that. Um, if you enjoyed this episode, well, first of all, if you have anything to share with us about this, because we were, uh, you know, I read several reviews.

It did pretty well critically for the most part, the critics liked it, the critics that didn’t like, it hated it, but a lot of critics, I really liked it. But other than that, I wasn’t really able to find out a lot about it. If you’ve got any insight into this movie that you’d like to share. Please leave a comment either on our webpage or on our Facebook page.

If you liked this episode, of course, you can find us wherever you can find a podcast streaming, just Google search. Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast, our webpage, our Facebook page, everything will pop up for you. You can find us there until next time. I’m Craig and I’m Todd with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Time for another tribute episode. This week, we celebrate the legacy of Richard Donner, the man behind most of the films we loved the most as children of the 80s. It was this movie – 1976’s The Omen – that brought him out of TV directing and into a wildly successful career in feature films. A solid entry into the “satanic cult craze” of late 70’s horror (which started with The Exorcist), it features a practically-out-of-retirement Gregory Peck as the stepfather of the antichrist.

The Omen (1976)

Episode 261, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we come to that time of year again, where we’ve had another famous personality in the film world die. Uh, and this time it was. The noted director, Richard Donner died at the ripe old age of 91 this month. It’s crazy. If you look back over Richard Donner’s filmography, most of the big action blockbuster, I shouldn’t say most many of the big action blockbuster hits of the eighties and a little bit in the nineties that were so popular and iconic of the time were directed by him.

He kicked it off with the Superman and he was probably the first person to really treat the superhero genre seriously, uh, instead of making it campy. And I think that’s what won everyone’s heart over with the original Superman and Superman to which he did. But before he did Superman and Superman to just a year or two, before he did this film called the omen, uh, in 1976, actually the first movie he did really out of TV, he spent most of his early career in television, did a ton of television.

Was offered the opportunity to direct the omen and jumped at that chance to finally direct a feature film. And once Gregory Peck got on board unexpectedly, he was actually pretty much retired from acting at the time. And he decided to come on board with the film. And that brought a lot of other, a lot of legitimacy to the movie, I guess you should say to the project.

And so other actors came on board and before, you know, Uh, we have a movie that, uh, when it was released, came about at the right time, it falls on the heels of Rosemary’s baby and the Exorcist. And a lot of these sort of say Titanic oriented films, religious horror type stuff that was really popular during this period of time in the late seventies.

So, um, yeah, uh, it became a blockbuster hit for him, boosted him into, uh, fame. And he, then he went on to direct, like I said, the Superman movies, the first two, uh, the lethal weapon series, all of those, we did Scrooged earlier on here, which is one of our favorites. Almost everything that he’s touched has turned to gold.

The Goonies, I forgot he directed Goonies. I always had it in my head that it was Christopher Columbus who directed it, but he just wrote it. And Stephen King produced it. Man Richard Donner, Steven Spielberg. Yeah. Steven Spielberg. Yeah. And then I went back and I looked, and I saw that so many movies that we really like were almost directed by him.

Like he turned down offers to direct other movies that went on to become big blockbusters. So a pretty interesting man, and we’re really happy to honor him today by reviewing the omen, certainly an iconic horror movie and O horror movie that, uh, would have been very important to him and his career. I had seen the omen, uh, later in life, maybe about six or seven years ago for the very first time.

I just watched it during one of those months where I was challenging myself to watch a horror movie a day in October and write a little review up about it. So I remember watching it, writing a little review about it and, uh, being a little disappointed in it at the time, thinking that it would be something a little more on the scale, the Exorcist or something, just super scary like that.

Uh, because it’s just been part of pop culture. For my childhood anyway, Damian, you know, Damien the antichrist, the yeoman. Oh my God. So I was scared, kind of scared of this movie for a while. And then when I watched the movie, I thought, oh, it’s not as scary as I thought it would be revisiting it this time.

I wondered if I would revise my judgment. And I guess as we go on and talk about it, we will see Craig. How about you? What’s your history with this movie?

Craig: Oh, no. Um, I was always aware of it. Uh, the box art, uh, is imprinted in my mind with, you know, the little boy casting the shadow of a upside down cross.

I’m sure I saw it when I was a kid, just because I knew that it was. A classic, I guess, at least of its day. And I remember iconic scenes from it. And, you know, I remember the general story. I think that I kind of, in my mind conflate part one and part two and Donner didn’t do part two. I remember in part two scenes with Ravens and a very gruesome scene of a woman being killed by a flock of Ravens on a road.

Uh, I think, um, and like I said, there are definitely parts of this movie that I remembered, but I didn’t, I don’t know, like I didn’t have any strong memories of it, but I was excited to go back and watch it. And ultimately I like it. I think it’s a good movie on, I am DB, you know, they, they categorize their movies and, and sometimes they’ll be like horror comedy or.

Horror suspense or whatever. And this one is just labeled straight up horror, which I find kind of. Interesting because though there definitely are horror elements. I mean, we’re talking about Satanism and the antichrist. It really feels more like a thriller or a family drama. Yeah. And. There’s nothing wrong with that.

That’s perfectly fine, but I don’t find it to be particularly scary. I wasn’t really scared. No. Right. I was interested and I was engaged and it’s a good movie. It’s it’s well done. It’s well shot. I mean, I don’t think that there’s, I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. That’s particularly notable about the filmmaking style.

Um, it’s very straightforward. There’s not a whole lot of really super stylistic stuff

Todd: going on. Not too much, but there’s, there’s a little bit of stuff in there. Yeah. A little

Craig: bit, a little bit. And uh, there are some deaths that are, if not shocking at the very least. Interesting and creative and, and I liked the way that many of these deaths were foreshadowed.

Um, there was some kind of unexpected stuff. I feel like I’m talking it down and I don’t mean to, because I really do like it, it just doesn’t, it’s not a lot, like most of the movies that we do, it’s not, it’s not a slasher. It’s not crazy supernatural. In fact, that’s kind of one of the things that I appreciate about it.

Uh, Richard Donner, one of his rules for the movie was that he didn’t want there to be anything that was overtly supernatural. He didn’t want anything to happen that couldn’t potentially happen in real life. And so I guess in some iteration, The script, there were mentions of, you know, supernatural, which covens and like D like hooved demons and stuff.

And he didn’t want that. He wanted there to maybe even be the suggestion that, uh, our main character, Robert Dorn played by Gregory Peck. Maybe he’s just kind of losing it a little bit because of the drama that it’s causing him, his family. And I actually think that that was a really smart approach. Now that said everything that happens in the movie could.

Happened in real life, but it would be awfully coincidence at all that all this crazy stuff is

Todd: happening. Yeah. Coincidences. Yeah. But you know, this is how the devil would work in real life. You know, uh, CS Lewis described miracles, you know, these aren’t going to be like, suddenly the clouds open up and this beam comes down and something miraculous happens in front of you.

It’s going to be, um, unseen, supernatural force, manipulating the natural forces that we all know and recognize in our world and in our nature to make something happen that we then deem as miraculous. Right. And so in that way, it’s still is a little, I don’t know, it’s in keeping, I think with a biblical type theme of the movie, at least at least one interpretation of the biblical, you start talking about religion and even, especially, even just Christianity itself.

And you’ve got a lot of different directions. You can go with that, a lot of different beliefs and coded within that a lot. There’s the mystical and the different degrees in different shades of that. It’s cool. Actually, like you said, that he decided to take this approach with the subject matter. Although, you know, I don’t feel like you walk into a movie like this expecting.

To be, guess what? You know, it was all just a bunch of coincidences kind of thing. And so it certainly wasn’t marketed that way. No, the movie was heavily marketed. I think they spent twice the budget of the movie just on marketing alone. And then they tried to play up this idea that the movie was cursed.

There was talk of these accidents that happen during production, that Gregory pack had booked a flight to Jerusalem or something and, or Israel. At some point it had canceled it last minute while he was on the production. But, and then that flight ended up crashing and killing everyone on board. I read these things, things like that, things like lightning striking two of the plane, the plane of producer and somebody else twice.

However, if you kind of dig a little deeper, you realize. Very little, if any of this has actually been verified. And it seems like a lot of these little things were just played up by Donner and the producers and sells Nick the writer, just to create some, some

Craig: press, you can read all about that stuff. And it’s an interesting stuff.

If all of it’s true, if any of it’s true, but right. Like you said, um, weird stuff. Lightening striking planes, plane crashes, accidents on set. Uh, there’s a scene that takes place in an animal sanctuary. And supposedly on that day, one of the, uh, employees at the animal sanctuary was killed by the animals.

And, um, but like you said, so much of it is unsubstantiated. So you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. I don’t know. I mean, if it is true, that’s, those are very strange coincidence is, and it makes for a good story and it, it worked, you know, there was a lot. Buzz about this movie. And you mentioned that it came after Rosemary’s baby and the x-ray system.

And it’s very much a in the vein of those movies, but this was kind of the last one as a, then we moved more into the eighties, the genre leaned heavily into slashers and these movies just kind of stopped being made. But I like it. I don’t want to go in on a negative note because not at all I do like it.

It’s good. Um, and Gregory Peck, like you said, lends a lot of legitimacy to this movie. And I don’t think that this movie would be as renowned or simply even as, as well-known, if he hadn’t signed on to do it. And Gregory Peck is one of, if not my favorite actors from that era, uh, I think that Gregory Peck is.

Incredible actor. He’s a little bit older here, but I think he puts in a, a great performance. I thought it was funny to read, you know, they say, don’t meet your heroes. I read that Donner had to do a lot of reshoots, especially in close-ups because Gregory Peck, um, had a thing about not wanting to be seen with double chins, really like, dude, you’re old, it happens to the best of us.

Um, and if you don’t want to be, you know, seen with double chins, maybe talk to your costumer about not putting you in turtle necks all the time,

then he’s good. And I think, uh, the performances are good. There is definitely some spooky stuff going on. I’ve mentioned before. I don’t consider myself deeply, deeply religious, but I do identify as a Christian and the, uh, idea. Of an antichrist is something that is not out of the realm of possibilities for me.

And so it’s, it’s frightening. And I, and I do like the family drama, you know, this all really hinges on a very early scene. The very first scene we see is in Rome and Robert thorn, Gregory Peck is on his way to the hospital, but he’s already been informed that his wife has delivered a baby, but that it had died, that it had only taken a couple of breaths and that it died, which obviously is a tragedy for any family.

And when he arrives there, I guess it’s a Catholic hospital and the priest who talks to him says, look, the baby died. But another baby was born at the exact same time and its mother died and there’s no other family. We should just tell your wife that that’s her baby and spare her. The loss thorn is reluctant at first, but eventually that’s what he does.

And, and so it all kind of hinges on this lie. You know, the, the wife, Katherine believes that this is her child and they moved to London. Thorn is immediately appointed, um, the American ambassador to great Britain. He has aspirations to be president, and then we get this whole happy family montage of photographs that show the first few years.

Of Damien’s life and they live in this big, beautiful house and on this big, beautiful estate and everything seems great. Like they are just happy, happy, happy. But then when Damien gets a little bit older, the strange things start happening and in real life you would never connect it. You know, you would never think, oh, wow.

Damien must be evil. That’s just not a conclusion that you would jump to, especially as his parents, but the first big, weird thing is a at Damien’s fifth birthday party. Some weird stuff is going on. Like there’s a Rottweiler, just kind of looming in the background. And he locks eyes with Damien’s nanny who is played.

I think by Jack plants, his daughter, once the Rottweiler locks eyes with her, she disappears for a minute. And then all the kids are down on the lawn. Having a great time. They’ve got like this kind of little mini carnival set up. I mean, these are obviously very wealthy people and you hear Holly calling to Damien.

And when everybody finally turns around, they see her standing up on 11.

Look at me, Jamie.

And she jumps off the legend, hangs herself in front of all of these people. Most of them, children.

Todd: Yeah. That’s a shocking scene. It’s not bloody, but no, when she leaves, you know, she’s, she’s tied to a rope and she crashes into the window on the story or two below her. So it’s loud and it’s piercing and it’s shocking.

And it’s, it’s, it’s really freaky actually. And the fact of course, it happens in front of everybody else. He’s smiling as she does it just seemingly out of character for her. Uh, it appears because we’ve seen her a little bit before here, we saw them moving into the house and we saw the family. And like you said, it is this happy family situation, but there still seems to be, uh, a bit of a.

Reserved and almost brooding nature about Robert. I think almost from the very beginning, I mean, obviously the beginning scenes of the film, right? When, when he’s had this issue with the almost stillborn baby, and then the guilt that he may be feels at replacing the baby with another one. But I felt like even just throughout the movie, this guy seemed to just his mind was elsewhere, right?

Like he’s very official. He’s very, business-like he clearly loves his wife. They’re smiling, they’re happy, you know? Um, there’s some romantic scenes in the beginning between the two of them. But one thing that I didn’t see that I kind of expected to see in a movie like this, where many scenes of just love between him and her and their son.

And I feel like it’s kind of an untapped aspect of this movie is okay. Well, we’re dealing with the antichrist here who has infiltrated your family. This is your son who for at least the first five years of his life has just been your son. This family’s got everything, you know, they’re, they’re living on, like you said, almost a palatial estate.

As the ambassadors got this great job, they have help that his fifth birthday party, which you know, is when all where all this takes place. It’s this extravagant affair on the grounds with carnival games and lots of people there and like journalists running around and things. Great. And yet, you know, I never got this sense.

This kid, like this kid is just almost, not even in the movie or really, you know, and I didn’t get these like tender scenes of, of them, you know, loving him or holding him and, or ear.

Craig: I know that’s what they were trying to establish with that photograph montage.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Well, I agree with you. I think another element is, um, I have absolutely no familiarity with a wealthy lifestyle.

And like we’ve said already, these people are very wealthy and not only very wealthy, but politically prominent. And like you said, there are journalists there. Um, I think one of the journalists, or he’s at least a photographer that’s just around all the time. I kind of didn’t really get that. Keith played by David Warner.

Who’s very recognizable. I recognize him most. He was the bad guy’s Lackey on Titanic. Yeah. But he’s been in tons of stuff. He’s always around taking photographs. And like you said, they do have help. In fact, I think that the whole reason that Holly kills herself is to get her out of the way because then a new nanny comes in and as it turns out and it’s very easy.

To tell from the beginning, she is specifically there to look over a Damien and she clearly fully knows who and what Damian is and it’s her purpose to protect him. So like, you know, she’s what, I don’t know, a Satanist, a cultist, uh, an Emissary of the devil, I don’t know, but she’s bad. And so Holly had to be gotten out of the way, so this woman could come in.

So that’s what I was getting at with the whole wealthy thing is because they do have so much help. It’s, you know, Damian is most often in the charge of someone else. Like they only have him in brief moments when they, you know, I guess, want to have a kid or when they are going out and making appearances and, and want him there.

Now that’s not to say. I don’t know, like I said, I have zero experience, but that’s not to say that wealthy parents don’t love their children, but these incredibly wealthy people who have nannies and so much other help, I wonder I could be entirely wrong. And I’m sure it, you know, as a case to case basis.

But I wonder if there is kind of that disconnect that you don’t see in families. Like we grew up in normal families,

Todd: parents where your

Craig: parents have to be around you. All the time. So hopefully they like you,

Todd: which really is better in the long run. We can’t say that either. Right? So, yeah, there’s also a

Craig: priest at the birthday party, uh, father Brennan, this kind of crazy eyed priest too, in a very frantic way, approaches Robert, you must take communion, drink the blood of Christ and each his flesh, or only if he is within you, can you defeat the son of the devil he’s killed once he’ll kill again, he’ll kill until everything that’s yours as his

Todd: father.

Can you fight him?

Craig: Except the Lord, Jesus drink his blood and tells him that he was at the hospital when Damian was born. And I guess this isn’t at the party. I think it’s maybe just after he visited, he visits him in his office, I suppose. And he’s very intense and he’s trying to tell thorn something is going on.

And just before security whisks him away, he screams his mother was a Jack and then he gets taken away, gets a squirted out. And there’s all these, all the weird things going on. Like Keith, the photographer develops his pictures and all of the pictures with father Brennan have this weird. He thinks that it’s a, an imperfection in the film or in the.

Meant process. Um, but in every image of him, there’s a line going through him like through the top of his torso black line, which becomes important later. So there threw out there’s this weird, suspicious stuff going on. And as a viewer, I’m curious. I don’t know. I, I don’t first time viewers, when this movie came out, I don’t know what they were expecting.

I know what this is about. I know that this is an antichrist movie. I know that this kid is supposed to be the antichrist. So I just go in assuming that all of these things are somehow. LinkedIn that they will be connected in and explains to us as they are. I don’t know how, you know, a first time viewer without that kind of expectation would, would take it, but it’s

Todd: dramatic.

Well, I think the thing that kind of puts it over the edge as far as that goes, and I, and I read that there was actually quite a bit of discussion about the Mrs. Blaylock character played by Billy White law. She’s the replacement nanny. She was originally written into the script as a more affable kind of friendly person, I guess, more kinda the neighbors and Rosemary’s baby.

Right, right. But from the minute she’s there, she’s pretty sinister to the point where you kind of wonder why they ever agreed to have her, especially because as soon as she shows up and introduce her to the cell phone on the news. Oh no. If,

Craig: if you let me see your boy. Well, yes, of course. It’s upstairs.

I’ll show you where it is. Why don’t you just leave us alone at first? Let us get acquainted in our room. Well, he’s shy with new people. Not with me. He will be, well, I don’t think fine. Go on, give it a try.

Todd: Leave me alone with your child, this woman that just walked in and they send her up and you know, it’s one of those classic moments. So where did you find this gal finder? I thought you’re the one who found her, you know, and then they go upstairs. They’re like, where the hell did you come from? Anyway, just like, oh, like the agency sent me and, uh, they found out that the nanny had died and wanted to send a replacement and here’s my references and all that.

And just like, oh, okay, thank you very much. And then that’s that, but this woman is just creepy. She’s doing things that, that they don’t want. She brings this dog into the house. This Rottweiler

Craig: expressly tells her to get rid of it. And like, she’s brazen, like, oh yeah. When she brings in the dog, thorn is like, you know, where did this dog come from?

And, uh, she’s like, well, it was wandering on the lawn. So I brought it in. I thought we could use a watchdog and. Look, if I want a dog, I’ll get a dog, myself getting rid of it. And she’s like, well, but Damien’s really attached. And he’s like, no, get rid of it. And then she still doesn’t like, and the same thing, there’s a scene where the thorns are dressed to the nines.

You don’t know where they’re going at first, but they’re, they’re very dressed up. Uh, the mom, Catherine is calling for Damien and Mrs. Baylock comes to the stairway and the mom’s like, is he ready to go? And Mrs Baylock is like, you know what? Uh, I think he’s too young to go to church. He wants to go to the park instead.

And she’s like, No, he’s going to church with us. And Mrs. Baylock is like, well, you know, I don’t really think he would understand, like, why are you letting this woman talk to you like that? You are super rich and you are her boss fire.

Todd: Exactly great. And when they do go to the church, of course, Damian, as they get closer and closer, Damien starts to get more and more upset. It’s like he sees Jesus up on the, there’s like a statue of Jesus up where the cross would be or whatever. And, and he gets more and more agitated. And by the time they pull up, uh, you know, he’s frantic, he’s clawing at his mom and all that and won’t get out of the car.

And so they end up leaving this it’s a, it was a wedding they were going to, and they ended up leaving. But you know, like, like at that point, come on, you know, and I think this is what Richard Donner and the producers had some discussions about was, do we leave her in because she’s clearly so sinister that it kind of throws that whole could this, or could this not be a coincidence thing off the law, but, but he was just in love with her performance and it is a great, yeah.

It is,

Craig: it is really good.

Todd: Yeah. He, he left it in there.

Craig: So I thought you were going to say like when they pull up to the church and Damien starts freaking out and you said at this point, at this point, oh, come on. Like, I can see how. As an audience member, you would be like, well, obviously there’s something off with this kid.

Like why is he, you know, he’s been totally docile and finds that the whole movie. And now all of a sudden you pull them up in front of a church and he like goes feral and is applying and his mom, blah, blah, blah. But you’re a dad. These things happen. Kids freak out sometimes for no good reason. They just freak out

Todd: in the day, especially freaking age.

Right. He’s five. I mean, mine’s four and already it’s like just, you never know how the day’s going to go and you don’t know what’s going to set them off. And sometimes you don’t even know what did set them off. He’s just in a bad mood, all of a sudden. And it’s, it’s maddening. I mean, that would be an awful lot of coincidences.

Right? My FA I loved it when they went to the animal safari park. Was interesting. I’ve been to one of these. They, we have one here in Beijing. It was a big, fun experience. I think I might’ve talked about on here once before, but you can drive through in your own car through some of the animal habitats where they’re, they’re running roaming free, but you’re not supposed to roll your windows down or get out of the car or hit them.

Right. Because they’re wild animals. Honestly, you’re given a whole lot the freedom to like, be good going through these animal parks. It’s kind of weird. We have this, but yeah, they they’re driving through the animal park and they get through the monkey section. And well, at first when they arrive, Damien kind of walks up to a bunch of giraffes, which all turn tail and run and mom was like, huh, that’s odd.

Well, let’s go over and look at the elements. You know, they get in the car and they drive through this and they get to the section where the monkeys are baboons or whatever they are. They’re all kind of visibly freaked out. And then they all start to surround the car and jump on the car and kind of attack the car, which is horrifying.

Craig: Oh yeah, because baboons. Well can be very violent and very dangerous. And I guess the way that they accomplished this was they drove through and there was somebody sitting in the back. And at first they took a baby baboons thinking that the baboons would be curious and protective and try to get the baby.

Well, the baboons didn’t know, react at all.

Todd: They don’t give a shit about their kids do

Craig: scary. The baby who cares, whatever we’ll make more. Then they took, I guess, like the pack leader of these baboons and put it in the back of the car and the baboons really did freak out. And so, you know, you see this and it is very real.

These baboons. Are attacking this car. And apparently Lee Remick who plays Catherine, she looks terrified and her reactions are genuine as mine would have been. I would have been scared to death like in that situation. Oh, so frightening where just, I understand that automobile glasses stronger than like a window pane is still theirs.

A little thin layer of glass between you and this horde of these violent wild animals, but you know, they get away and then they never talk about it again. Like it’s just all again, it could be coincidence. And actually, were there ever any parts in the movie where you felt sorry for Damien because the kid doesn’t know he’s the devil, right?

Todd: Well, does he, that’s the big question, right? Maybe not, but then he turns around and does that little evil grin every now and then

Craig: yeah.

Todd: Block size with things. And you think, oh man, I think the kid does kind of know he’s the devil.

Craig: If I remember correctly in part two, he has people like Mrs. Baylock not Mrs Baylock, but other people who are specifically there to protect and guide him and it’s in part two that he is basically informed of who and what he is.

And once, once he’s informed of that, then. He actually starts doing some of these things. Like I didn’t get the impression in this movie that Damien directed any of these things. I didn’t get the impression that he directed his nanny to kill herself, that he directed these animals to attack. These are forces that are happening outside, uh, of him.

And when the giraffes ran away from him, I felt bad.

Todd: He’s going to the giraffes. He seemed happy. They ran away. Aw. But that’s kind of unique. Also thing about this film that is good to point out because there are evil kid movies. There are a lot of them, right. And usually in those movies, it’s that the kid is just pure evil and they’re directing these things and here, everything is just sort of a reaction to his nature and who he is.

Again, I don’t know if, if he knew. Or not, but I agree with you. He probably wasn’t making these things happen, you know, it’s just, it’s just an ominous. It’s, he’s an. He’s an omen of what is the correct

Craig: at this point. And I think that this is intentional. I really started to feel for Catherine because after this bad Boone attack, she is shook. Like she’s feeling weird. She tells her husband that she thinks that she needs to see a psychiatrist. She’s having all of these bad thoughts. Eventually some other stuff happens, but eventually she does go to a psychiatrist and the husband meets with the psychiatrist, which is so quaint and from a different time, like the psychiatrist has to like brief the husband.

Oh yeah. You know, your wife.

Todd: Okay. Everything about it. Breaches all kinds of privacy. And uh, and it’s, it’s your typical psychiatrist explains everything that’s going on. Yeah. That you used to get in movies? Well, this is happening because of blah, blah, blah. And she should do that. And you should do that. And now you make a decision

Craig: what the psychiatrist says that she’s having delusions, she’s having delusions that Damien wants to kill her.

And that she’s not really Damien’s mother. Well, of course, Robert knows that that part of it is true. She’s not his mother. And so then he’s kind of freaked out too. He’s also freaked out because father Brennan appears again and demands a meeting with them and says, if you don’t meet with me, Catherine is going to die.

Um, so he does. Meet with him in the park and then father Brennan quotes revelations with this poem, which if you have studied the Bible at all, you would know right away that this isn’t from the Bible, the Bible isn’t, most of it is not written in verse like this literally poem. When the Jews returned to Zion at a comment’s rips, the sky and the holy Roman empire rises, then you die, must die from the Turners.

See, he rises creating armies on either shore turning mind against his brother to the nine exists. No more. He tells him you need to go to this town megadose or something. Um, and see some old man, I don’t know. But then so, uh, then, uh, Robert leaves and immediately,

Todd: he also says that the reason is that. Oh,

Craig: right.

I forgot about

Todd: that. She’s pregnant. And he’s like, what the hell are you talking about? How would you even know that? And you know, she’s not, that’s pretty important. How would

Craig: he even know that? Exactly.

Todd: No tax like this guy is just nuts, right? Like I wouldn’t listen to a thing. This guy was saying either he’s approach is all wrong.

He comes across as the crazy man.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, totally. The big, the big, uh, big like wind storm with lightning strikes and Brennan runs for a church, like tries to get into a church, but, um, a lightning rod is struck by lightning falls and impales him just as. It looked in those pictures, that image, the image of him, impaled still standing, you know, impaled by this huge pole appears on the front page of the paper because you know, that’s something that a newspaper would put on

Todd: the front page, death scene.

Well, maybe in London, actually, I hear the tablets. They’re quite fierce, I suppose, but this is, this is part of, what’s kind of interesting and quaint about the movie. And also like this can’t be coincidence at this point because this guy just said this thing out of the blue and how would he know? But then when he has his encounter with the wife and she says, she doesn’t want to have any more kids, he says, that’s fine.

And she says, so then you’ll agree to an abortion. And he’s like what she said. Yeah. I just found out this morning that I’m praying. And I don’t want to have the baby. And he’s like, oh my God. You know? So at that point, come on, you know, this, this would be way too coincidental. And this is when he starts to really take this seriously.

And then the psychiatrist explains everything. Seen another thing that makes it so quaint is that the psychiatrist brings this up. He says, yeah, she’s pregnant and all that. And she wants to have the abortion. And, and he says, well, she should, because if she has the baby, it’s gonna, you know, affect her psyche in a terrible way or something like that.

And Robert says, no, I’m definitely not going to do it now because it was foretold that this baby would not live. And so I’m going to make sure that this baby lid, I feel like at this point, And if not, but well, before this, the home movies really about Robert get all the revolves around him, it all concentrates on him.

It follows his train of thought and, and his sort of conversion from just S all this doubt to starting to believe something’s up. And then his investigation of what to do. And again, also at this point, um, while we’ve got one more thing coming up, one more big scene, but, but after that, it’s all just like investigation.

And we sort of leave the family and we leave the city and we leave Damian, and we don’t see Damian again for a while. At that point, it kind of loses some steam, I think, or some, some, some tension,

Craig: arguably on the other hand, I feel like they do move through that stuff pretty quickly, which I appreciate because you’re right.

It is a lot of let’s fly to this city and talk to this person that was fly to this place and look at cemetery. And I mean, it goes by pretty fast, but, uh, before that. When, when Robert says that he will fight for that baby, I feel like the very next scene Damien’s riding around on his tricycle in his room.

And, uh, Mrs. Baylock is, is watching him. Meanwhile, Catherine is cleaning, I guess, or checking on plants or something. Yeah. On a landing on the second floor, and it’s a landing that overlooks the first floor and she has to get at something up high, a planter, a chandelier or something. And so she moves a, like an end table and, and stands on it, which was stupid in the first place.

Yeah.

Todd: This woman’s got other people to do this for her now the first and second of all, why would you do this? Yeah,

Craig: this is Baylock let’s. She likes, she ominously opens the door and Damien goes flying out on his tricycle. And again, to be fair, like he’s furiously pedaling and he’s not even really looking where he’s going.

So I didn’t get the impression that he did this on purpose, but he hits the table that his mother is standing on and she falls over the ledge and lands on what was almost certainly like a marble floor and very easily could have been killed. She’s not, but she’s terribly injured. And, um, she loses the baby.

So you know, that warning that the baby would die, comes to pass because of, you know, Damian and, and Mrs. Baylock I guess. Um, and that scene where she fell. I found this story really interesting. The woman, uh, who plays Katherine Lee Remick refused to do the stunt. And that was largely in part because of the Exorcist and the fact that, uh, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair were both severely injured, uh, in the making of that movie, doing that.

Stunts largely because William Friedkin, the director was kind of a crazy person. Um, and, and really didn’t take their, uh, safety into consideration, but they both suffered injuries that stayed with them for the rest of their lives. And so Lee Remick didn’t want to do this stunt. So the, the trip over the balcony looked to me like a double, and then they set up a shot where it looks like the camera is following her falling onto the ground.

But really what they did is they recreated the floor on a vertical plane and then just dollied her up to it. And if you know that watching it, you can tell, um, yeah, but if you don’t know, it, it almost looks more like a trick of timing. Um, like they just maybe slowed the film down a little bit as she was falling.

I actually really. That scene. Oh, it’s

Todd: fantastic. Well, I love the cinematography of this, and I also liked how the first thing to land is to is the fishbowl, which shatters and leaves the fish out there. And, oh gosh, you know, there’s just so many cool artistic things you can do that makes something seem more violent and horrible without showing it.

But there’s something about that. Fishbowl shattering the, the water spring out in those fish, lying there just before she follows it. You know, it’s just a real audio and visceral and visual kind of representation of a body splattering. You know, it’s quite beautiful. Uh, and, and shocking and spooky. And the movie is great at that.

I mean, there’s really well, there’s one scene in here. That’s, that’s a bit gory, but other than that, the deaths that happened, you know, there’s not really anybody blood, very

Craig: little, there’s a little bit of blood, like on. Uh, Catherine’s shirt here. And I feel like maybe a few drops of blood come out of her mouth out of her mouth.

Yeah, there there’s very, very little blood, uh, at all in the whole movie. When Robert visits her in the hostel. I think all she can say to him is don’t let him kill me. She believes that Damian is trying to kill her, which whether he consciously is, or not, it’s clear that her life very much is in danger.

And then the photographer, Keith calls Rob, and brings him over to his studio where he shows him the photographs of Brennan with the pole through him. Um, but also he had caught a picture of the nanny before she had been killed. And there’s a suggestion of a rope around her neck. Robert’s like, oh, okay, well, I’m going to go investigate this or whatever.

And Keith’s like, I’m coming too. And Robert’s like, well, this doesn’t have anything to do with you. And Keith says, uh, yeah, does. And he shows him a picture of himself. He caught by accident, a photograph of himself in a mirror and there is something going through him. So, um, like you said, they go. Little investigative journey.

They, they visit the hospital where Damian was born, but the original structure burned down five years ago, right after Damien was born and it’s been replaced with a new building, but all of the records have been destroyed. The only remaining link is the head priest survived the fire. He was severely injured, but he survived the fire.

He’s now in a monastery. So then they have to go to the monastery,

Todd: leave the hospital. They have this conversation with this nun slash nurse or whatever in this thing. And while they’re in the hallway talking to her, there’s this thing. Like moving up constantly moving up and down behind. And the wall looks like a dumbwaiter or something.

I’m like, what in the hell is that? That they finished talking to her and she’s like, okay, well, I’ll see you later. She turns around and back, it’s end into this thing and it lifts her up. And I was like, I know what in the hell is that? And I looked it up and this is a real thing. This is called up. Have you heard of this?

No,

Craig: but it was really cool.

Todd: It isn’t continuously running elevator. It looks like one of the most dangerous things in the world. Yes. It’s called a pattern Oster lift. And apparently they stopped constructing new ones, like in the mid seventies, out of concern for people’s safety. Very good. But, but it’s just like a con like a lift on chain, like a big loop, which just a whole bunch of elevator cars that are constantly coming down on one end.

And then, you know that next to it, that, that side’s going up. And when you want to get on or off, you just step onto it. When that comes down. As it’s coming down and then you want to get off of it. You just step off of it as it approaches the floor.

Craig: Crazy cool. But it did look very dangerous

Todd: were way too.

Cool. Look it up. I went down some serious rabbit holes on YouTube and Wikipedia on this pattern, Oster lift. I’m not going to lie just from this seat in this movie crazy

Craig: before they visit the priests, they sit down and have a discussion and they talk about the prophecy that Brennan had read, supposedly from the book of revelations, even though it’s not really, as it turns out all of these things.

That they say it has something to do with Israel and a comment and like everything has happened. And it says, when these things happen, the devil will rise out of the eternal sea and they can’t figure out what the eternal C means. But, uh, Keith finally figures out that I guess biblical scholars have said that the eternal sea is the world of politics because it’s constantly turbulent and whatever.

So the, the son of, of the devil will rise out of the world of politics, which, which fits perfectly because, you know, thorn is high level politics. He has aspirations to be president. So it all lines up. They go to the monastery, the priest is there. He’s badly burned, but he’s a. Able to write that the child’s mother is in service day or something, which is a cemetery.

So they go to the cemetery and they find the grave of a woman who died on Damien’s birthday, buried right next to Bambino Schiano or whatever that died on that day. And when they open the quote-unquote mother’s grave, it’s an animal we’ve, it’s, it’s a Jackal. I don’t know if you could tell that just by seeing the skeleton, but that’s what it’s supposed to be.

And then they also open the baby’s grave because, uh, Robert says if it’s empty, that may mean that my child is still out there somewhere, but when they open it, there is the skeleton of a baby in there, but its skull has been crushed. So they come to understand that, um, the Thorne’s baby. Died. It had been killed.

This had been, you know, part of the plan to get Damien into their care. Their, their baby had been killed. They’re attacked by rottweilers. Um, but they get away Robert calls Kathy and tells her to leave London right away. And so she starts getting ready, but as she’s getting ready, they lock appears right behind her and pushes her out of the hospital window.

And she’s, I don’t know, probably eight stories in the air. And so she’s dead, which poor lady, she didn’t do anything.

Todd: No, I feel horrible about that. And the next scene is Robert getting the call, and this is a one-shot take on him and it’s long and it’s painful. His acting is incredible. And you just see this man’s face, just what it would be like to get a phone call that someone you love is dead.

He’s an amazing actor. He’s just really, really pulled that off. You know, I read that Gregory Peck, his son had committed suicide just a couple of years before this. And he felt like he hadn’t been around for him. And apparently was racked with quite a bit of guilt. And the producer sent him the script kind of hesitantly.

I mean, realizing they were sending them a script about, you know, a fathers might have to kill a son. Also that may be the reason why he accepted the role is just to kind of play that out and kind of come to terms with it and maybe at least be able to pull from that experience, uh, for the role. And so he did and, and it’s it’s whatever, wherever it comes from, he’s a talented actor regardless, but it’s, it’s a brilliant performance.

It’s just so, so good. And I saw that the script was offered to like Dick van Dyke and yeah.

Craig: Regretted turning it down. Can you imagine Dick van Dyke God, I mean, what, how interesting that would have been, I’ve never seen him in a serious role like this, but who knows? He’s a very talented actor to

Todd: pull it off anyway.

Yeah. So, um, so that was incredible. And then I think I was reading the trivia that, that he had a disagreement with Richard Donner that during this, um, he wanted. Throw things around the room and kind of go nuts when he got the call and Richard Donner, like, no, I want you to do it this way. And he says, no, you’re wrong.

You’re wrong. Well, finally, when he got the dailies and they both sat down and looked at him, Gregory Peck, conceited, that a no, actually you were right. This was exactly the way to do the scene. And it’s, it’s followed by another wonderful scene where he’s just laying down on the bed and he’s just staring off into space.

And the is just slowly, very slowly dialing in on him. Again, one shot and the photographer at some point comes and sits down next to the bed, kind of in the background. And he’s chatting with him about the prophecy and all that. Robert just says, um, Kathy

Craig: is dead. I want Damien to die too.

Todd: My

Craig: God. I know that’s crazy.

Like he’s losing everything and realizing it and you see it with the loss. There’s also anger. Like he’s clearly embraced that Damien Damien is the cause of this. And at this point it’s about not revenge necessarily, but justice, uh, maybe, I don’t know, but he wants Damien dead. So they go to Megento and visit with a priest who gives Robert the seven special daggers.

And he instructs them. Like, you have to kill them with this. You have to stab him with this one first and that will take his human life. But then you have to stab him with all these others in this particular way to like destroy his spirit

Todd: on an altar in a church.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It’s gotta be unhallowed ground and they leave.

And then all of a sudden he has, uh, Robert has a crisis of conscious. He says, I can’t do this. I can’t kill him. And he throws the daggers and cases will, if you aren’t going to do it, I’ll do it. And he goes, and he grabs the daggers. And as he’s bending over to pick them up, as he standing back up this truck, carrying enormous plates of glass backs up and like hit something and the plate of glass shoots out and decapitation.

Keith and his head goes fly for a while

Todd: for a

Craig: while, but still no blood. No, like it’s just a separate head. Like no blood and David Warner kept that head forever and then lost it in his divorce, which I think is

Todd: so funny.

Craig: Oh gosh. That’s

Todd: so funny. I also read that, um, the way that Donna edit, you know, had that edited was purposely so that when people close their eyes, so they wouldn’t have to see the decapitation that, but by the time they opened them again, the head would still be flying through the air. Yeah, it’s cool.

It’s

Craig: cool. I enjoyed it. So Robert flies home. Gets back to his house. He traps the Rottweiler in the basement. He looks for the 6 66, the mark of the beast symbolizes the unholy Trinity of, of the devil, the antichrist and the false prophet. He’s attacked by bay lock and they fight for a while, but he ends up killing her pretty brutally end.

He takes Damien and he throws Damien in the car and speeds off. And the police are immediately in pursuit, I guess, because he is, you know, an ambassador he’s an important, you know, maybe there’s security around all the time. And when they see him speeding away, they think something must be going on. So they’re in immediate pursuit.

He takes Damien to a church and takes them up to the alter and goes to kill him, lifts up the first dagger. And this moment goes by really fast, but I felt like it was very kind of poignant to where Damian bay. For his life and, and calls him daddy like daddy, please. Don’t like, I can understand why that would cause Robert to hesitate, but he’s going to do it anyway.

But before he can do it, he’s shot by police and killed. And the next thing we see is the funeral. And it’s suggested that Damien is going to be adopted by the United States president and, and they’re standing there. All the, the president, the first lady and Damian are all standing there looking at the grave with their back to the camera.

And then Damien turns around, looks directly into camera and smiles, a very wicked kind of smile. And, and Doner had tricked him into doing that. He had been like, don’t, you dare laugh. Don’t you dare laugh. And so he got this sly smile out of him and it looks great. Poor

Todd: little kid. Right. But he hasn’t had any other roles, basically just this.

And probably he was a bit of a Hallean on the set, but a diner had hired them because during the casting process, he’d had all, a bunch of kids run up to him and say, all right, now, now attack me, you know, act like you’re gonna attack me. And he was particularly vicious. And so he was like, dye his hair black and put some black contact lenses in his eyes to make it more sinister.

And he’s going to be the guy. And like

Craig: you said, he’s not in it very much. He maybe has two or three lines. Like he barely talks. He just kind of sits in the background most of the time, but he’s creepy, you know? Uh, and good. I also read that initially in the script and they may even shot this. Um, the whole family was supposed to die.

Right. Was successful in killing Damien and then was killed by police. But I don’t know if just ultimately they decided, or if they did test screenings and they just decided that it was too grim. So instead of it being too grim with them all dying, they let the devil win, like, I guess ends less grim.

Todd: Well, maybe they also figured, I mean, you can’t really kill the devil.

Right. So a true,

Craig: and, and I, I don’t know if they were anticipating well, that’s the thing. I don’t know if they were anticipating SQLs with the gravitas of Gregory Peck. You know, I, I suppose there was probably some, um, potential there. And, and there were sequels and I do vaguely. Remember the second one. I remember the second one being gorier than the first one.

And I remember liking it. I never saw the third one, the third one stars, Sam Neill as an adult Damon, rising to power, but I believe that he’s killed at the end. And that’s the original trilogy. There was later a, uh, third seal that was made for television and it was intended to be the first of a series of new sequels.

And it wasn’t Damien, but rather somehow Damien had fathered a child or something, and his line was going to continue. Now, I actually did see the fourth one and it was bad. It’s a bad movie, but I saw it when I was a kid. So I kind of remember enjoying it, but. If you seek it out, just I’m telling you, be aware it’s bad.

Todd: Isn’t there a series now, or wasn’t there a couple of years ago, a TV

Craig: series was there. Yeah, and I didn’t watch it, but, uh, I think it got pretty good reviews, but it didn’t last very long. Um, but the movie really is considered a horror classic, and I understand why it’s well-made and, and there are very, very good performances and it’s an interesting story.

It moves, you know, it’s almost two hours long, but yes, there’s that little bit of a lull there at the end where they’re doing the investigating, but I never felt that it was slow. I will admit that I turned it off when there was about a half an hour left and took a nap. Yeah. And came

Todd: back to it. You’re hilarious.

Uh, it really moved. I wouldn’t say it was slow. I will admit though I did take a nap at one. I was tired. I fully refreshed and ready to tackle it again. I, I felt like it was a little boring, to be honest. I don’t demand that all my horror movies be slam bang action Fest, you know, they don’t have to be, but I didn’t also feel that just impending sense of dread.

I felt like there were a number of things that happened, um, and they were kind of spaced out and paced out and they were horrifying to be sure, but. Then it kind of slogs, I think when it gets to investigation and going out and we just kind of leave Damien entirely. And, and when you just sort of forget about your main threat and you’re just in the background, whereas the protagonists of the story are able to go out and jet set around the world to figure out a mystery and what to do.

Eh, I don’t know. I just, I found a little boring maybe also, because of seeing a lot of movies like this or the movies that have a lot of these elements in it. So it’s not particularly novel. I was a little disappointed in the film to be honest, but not because it’s not a well-made film, not because it it’s not overall compelling and interesting.

Uh, it just, I just felt like you could have shaved about a half hour off of it maybe. And. Made it better, in my opinion, in my opinion. Now, now it’s interesting that Jerry Goldsmith, we didn’t even talk about the score, the score, the score is great. And Jerry Goldsmith, um, who had been, you know, scoring movies well before this and, and beyond, and is a fantastic composer.

This was his first and only academy award. And he almost didn’t go to the ceremony because he’s just kinda like been nominated on site. Yeah, and never wanted, and he got it for this one. So that was pretty good.

Craig: And it’s great. Play a little bit of it somewhere, cause it’s really good. And even, even if you haven’t seen this movie, I bet you’ve heard this somewhere.

It’s it’s really familiar.

and it’s very ominous. They went way over budget to get him because I don’t know if it was Donner or the producers or, or who they really felt that they needed to establish the tone and atmosphere. And they really thought they could do it with this, with his score. And they were right. I think without this score, it would be lacking.

In in some way. And you know, we

Todd: had briefly mentioned the cinematography and you thought it was fairly pedestrian and I can see why. I think a lot of the movie is a little pedestrian and so there’s really no need for flashy cinematography. But I think in those moments, like with the horrifying things that do happen or the moments where things are just a little more tense and suspenseful, actually, I think the cinematography gets pretty brilliant.

You know, I’m thinking about when he comes back to the house and he’s, he’s, you know, looking for Damien and. He’s about to kill him. And he has to face off with the dog and the woman and everything. And I thought that was particularly well shot with some great camera angles. Donner had talked cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor out of retirement to do this movie, Gilbert Taylor.

And this had had a long history of a hundred, a hundred plus movies before this. Um, and of course the movie was a big hit and Taylor went on to be the cinematographer for star wars, the first star wars the year after this. So, uh, that turned out to be. Pretty smart move. And then he continued on for a few more.

I found it interesting that, um, Richard Donner, I guess I just hadn’t occurred to me, but a lot of the movies that he did was were with Mel Gibson, Maverick, which gosh, I love that movie. Of course, he started working with him on lethal weapon. I was kinda surprised. And Mel Gibson had some very nice things to say about him called him uncle Donnie or something like that and, and said that he was just a wonderful guy who, when he directed a movie.

This hard-ass guy who just demanded everything we’d done his way, but he would say, okay, you know, let’s try it your way and see what happens. You know, always kind of imagining that maybe the actor could bring something to the table. He wasn’t expecting and gave them the freedom to

Craig: do that. He seemed cool.

He seemed like a cool guy. You know, this one, even though, you know, he lived a nice long life. Yeah. So people die, it happens, but this one hit kind of hard because you know, some of his movies, particularly the Goonies and screws are two of my favorite movies, period. I just, I, and, and there’s such a touchstone of my childhood.

Um, I was really sad and Donna just seemed like a cool guy. I’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes stuff, uh, about the Goonies and seen a lot of photographs and video. And it, it really seems like he was, those kids loved him. Mm

Todd: it’s. Like a father to them or something. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And it just seemed like it was, you know, an amazing experience for them.

He also, you know, another thing I like about Donna is he cameos and a lot of his own movies and he cameos in other horror movies. We’ve seen him, Cammie, we we’ve made note of his cameos and some of the horror movies that we’ve done. Um, so he just seems. You know, from an outsider’s perspective, who knows?

I didn’t know the man, but from an outsider’s perspective, he just seemed like a cool guy. And, uh, you know, he had been in kind of failing health, but 91 and he hadn’t done anything for a while, but yeah, as recently as last year, he had, you know, spoken publicly about his desire to. Direct a fifth lethal weapon.

He wasn’t ready to stop, but old age gets you in. And that happens. But, you know, as, as I usually end up saying left behind an amazing legacy and will be remembered fondly in the world of filmmaking for a very long time, I think, and for many of us growing up in the eighties and nineties, we will, uh, carry those very fond memories of, of, uh, his work for a very long time.

Todd: Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share this with a friend. You can find us online just by Googling two guys and a chainsaw podcast where our Facebook page should pop up. Along with our regular website, two [email protected] and our Twitter feed. Just leave us a comment or a message on any one of those venues.

Let us know what you thought of this episode. Give us some advice for episodes that we should do in the future until that time. I’m Todd and I’m Craig with two guys and a chainsaw .